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Dbeatbh’s English Classics 


foe MERCHANT 
Ve eN TOE, 


EDITED BY 


H. L. WITHERS 


PRINCIPAL OF ISLEWORTH TRAINING COLLEGE ; SOMETIME SCHOLAR 
OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, AND 
ASSISTANT MASTER AT CLIFTON COLLEGE 


THE LIBRARY OF THE 
MAY 9 o5 ce 1937 


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IgIo 


THE ARDEN SHAKESPEARE 


HAMLET. 


Edited by Edmund K. Chambers, B. A., Oxford. 


MACBETH. 


Edited by Edmund K. Chambers, B. A., Oxford. 


JULIUS CAESAR. 


Edited by Arthur D. Innes, M. A., Oxford. 


THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 


Edited by H. L. Withers, B. A., Oxford. 


TWELFTH NIGHT. 


Edited by Arthur D. Innes, M. A., Oxford. 


AS YOU, LIKE: IT; 


Edited by J. C. Smith, M. A., Edinburgh. 


A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM. 


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GENERAL PREDACE. 
ra) 0 
LPP J atte 

IN this edition of SHAKESPEARE an attempt is made to 
present the greater plays of the dramatist in their literary 
aspect, and not merely as material for the study of philology 
or grammar. Criticism purely verbal and textual has only - 
been included to such an extent as may serve to help the 
student in the appreciation of the essential poetry. Questions 
of date and literary history have been fully dealt with in the 
Introductions, but the larger space has been devoted to the 
interpretative rather than the matter-of-fact order of scholar- 
ship. Aesthetic judgments are never final, but the Editors 
have attempted to suggest points of view from which the 
analysis of dramatic motive and dramatic character may be 
profitably undertaken. In the Notes likewise, while it is 
hoped that all unfamiliar expressions and allusions have been 
adequately explained, yet it has been thought even more 
important to consider the dramatic value of each scene, and 
the part which it plays in relation to the whole. These 
general principles are common to the whole series ; in detail 
each Editor is alone responsible for the play or plays that have 
been intrusted to him. 

Every volume of the series has been provided with a 
Glossary, an Essay upon Metre, and an Index; and Appen- 
dices have been added upon points of special interest, which 
could not conveniently be treated in the Introduction or the 
Notes. The text is based by the several Editors on that of 
the Glove edition: the only omissions made are those that are 
unavoidable inan edition likely to be used by young students. 

By the systematic arrangement of the introductory matter, 
and by close attention to typographical details, every effort 
has been made to provide an edition that will prove con- 
venient in use. 


ee a i aoe 
: tS ih, “bare P sed, dee, 
fi wrSOon OU 


CONTENTS 


INTRODUCTION “ x . 
DRAMATIS PERSONA - 2 4 


THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 


NOTES - . Mi e L . 


APPENDIX A—THE TEXT 


APPENDIX B— PROSODY - - 


APPENDIX C—THE ‘ MEANING’ OF 
GLOSSARY 2 . = : 4 
INDEX OF WORDS - . ‘ z 


GENERAL INDEX - ; 2 : 


INTRODUCTION. 


He THE! PLOT. 


In the days when Venice was the busiest and wealthiest 
city in all Europe, there lived in it a rich merchant named 
Antonio, who by means of several great ships of his own 
traded eastward as far as India, and westward as far as 
Mexico. This Antonio, at a time when all his wealth was 
at sea, wishing to furnish his young kinsman and dearest 
friend, a soldier and scholar called Bassanio, with means to 
pay his court to Portia, a lady of Belmont in Italy, borrowed 
the sum of three thousand ducats, for three months, from an 
enemy of his own, one Shylock, a Jew, on agreement that, if 
he failed to repay the sum in time, he should suffer the loss 
of a pound of his own flesh. On the selfsame night in which 
Bassanio, thus equipped, set sail from Venice, an acquaint- 
ance of his, by name Lorenzo, fled to the mainland of Italy 
with Jessica, Shylock’s only child, carrying off also a quantity 
of his jewels and money. This loss so inflamed the Jew’s 
malice, that when Antonio’s ships failed to come home within 
the period of three months, Shylock flung him into prison 
and clamoured to the Duke for execution of the forfeit on his 
bond. Meantime Bassanio, by a right choice among three 
caskets respectively of gold, silver, and lead, having won 
Portia to wife, in the very hour of marriage heard of Antonio’s 
danger, and, provided by Portia with three times the sum 
needed, sped to Venice. His intervention failing, Antonio 
was saved in extremity by Portia herself, who, in the guise of 
a Doctor of Civil Law, followed her husband into the Duke’s 
Court of Justice. The trial over, they returned severally to 


vill THE, MERCHANT OF VENICE. 


Belmont, Bassanio taking Antonio with him; there Portia, 
by means of a ring which in her disguise she had got from 
Bassanio, made clear to him who it was that had delivered 
his friend from death. 


2, SOURCES: OF | THE) RPEpT 


Note.—This section is only for pupils who can read, or get somebody to read to 
them, at least a few extracts either from the authorities given below or from the 
abridgment in Furness’ Variorum Edition, For others it will be unintelligible 
and useless. 

1. Shakespeare did not as a rule invent the incidents which 
occur in his plays, but borrowed them, in outline at least, from 
Shakespeare’s Very various sources. Some of his plots are 
plots notoriginal. fonded on older plays, others on romances; 
several are taken from Sir Thomas North’s version of a French 
rendering of Plutarch’s Lives. Scholars have spent endless 
pains in tracking out the old plays and: stories on which 
Shakespeare drew for material; a number of them were 
collected and published in the year 1843 by John Payne 
Collier, under the title of Shakesfeare’s Library. 

2. Inthe case of Zhe Merchant of Venice, the outline of the 
plot, as has been given above, was found by Capell as one of 

a collection of stories in an Italian book called 

Main outline of ; ; ‘ P 

Merchant of | 41 Pecorone, written by a certain Ser Giovanni 

pine derived | Fiorentino, and printed in 1378. A modern 

translation of it is given in the second volume 

of Collier’s Shakespeare's Library; but no translation of 

Shakespeare’s time has been discovered, and either such.a 

translation once existed and has since perished, or else Shake- 

speare read the story in the original Italian. [For another 
possible alternative, see § 4, below. ] 

The story in // Pecorone is, in main particulars, the same 
as that given above. We find in it a Venetian merchant 
fondly devoted to a young kinsman, and this kinsman in 
love with a fair and wise lady of Belmont, who is only to be 
won by the suitor who shall undergo successfully an extra- 
ordinary test; we have the same pledge with a Jew, made 
for the same purpose, followed by the lover’s success and the 


INTRODUCTION. ix 


merchant’s bankruptcy, and later on by a trial in which the 
merchant’s rescue is achieved, through just the same inter- 
pretation of the law, by the lady in the same disguise; and 
finally, on their return to Belmont it is by means of a ring, 
begged from her husband when in Venice, that she is able, 
after due banter and mystification, to prove her identity with 
the unknown lawyer. 

There are minor differences: for instance, in the Italian 
story none of the names of persons are the same as Shake- 
peare’s. The lover makes ¢hree voyages to Belmont; the sum 
borrowed is ¢ez thousand ducats; when the marriage takes 
place the young kinsman forgets the merchant, and is only 
accidentally reminded of him just as the time allowed by the 
bond is on the point of expiring; and so on. 

But, besides these slight variations, two important differ- 
ences in incident are made by Shakespeare. First, he changes 
the method by which the Lady of Belmont is to be won, 
from its unsuitable form in //7 Pecorone to that of the choice 
among three caskets; and secondly, he gives the Jew a 
daughter, whose elopement with a Christian forms an im- 
portant part of the play. 

3. The sources of these two variations must be looked for 
elsewhere. (i) The story of a choice among three vessels, 
respectively of gold, silver, and lead, with in- ah 
scriptions somewhat similar to those in the play, main changes of 
and with a marriage depending on the right mde 
choice, occurs in the Gesta Romanorum, a Latin collection 
of medizval tales, made in England probably about the 
thirteenth century. This collection was translated into Eng- 
lish, became extremely popular, and was frequently printed 
in Shakespeare’s time! (ii) A story resembling in some 
points that of Jessica has been found in the Tales of Mas- 
succio di Salerno, who flourished about 1470. 

4. Scholars have proved that both the story of the Pound 
of Flesh, and the story of the Caskets, were widely popular, 
and that they occur in slightly different forms again and 


1 Any good library will possess the reprint of this collection, published by the 
Early English Text Society. 


3 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 


again in European and in Oriental literature.1 But it is cer- 
: _ tain, from accumulation of coincidences, that 
ean pica it was upon /7 Pecorone and the Gesta Roman- 
Bay called 74¢ orum that Shakespeare drew for the plot of the 
Merchant of Venice. It has been conjectured, 
indeed, that Shakespeare did not use these sources at first 
hand, but that the two stories had already been combined to 
form a single play, and that it was this play that Shakespeare 
used as his material. This conjecture is founded on a refer- 
ence which has been discovered in a book called Zhe Schoole 
of Abuse, published in 1579, written by a certain Stephen 
Gosson, a student of Oxford. The book is an attack on the 
poets and playwrights of the time, and among the plays 
specially excepted from blame by the author is “ Zhe Jew... 
shown at the Bull... representing the greedinesse of worldly 
chusers and bloody mindes of usurers”. ‘This description is 
exceedingly short, but it is certainly apt enough if it refers 
to the combined tales of the Bond and the Caskets. 

Two other possible references to this play of The Jew have 
been discovered : one in a letter of Edmund Spenser’s, writ- 
ten about 1579, and another in a play called 7he Three Ladies 
of London, printed in 1584. These two references are, how- 
ever, both slight and doubtful, and since not a line of the 
play itself survives, the conjecture that Shakespeare founded 
The Merchant of Venice upon it must remain conjecture only, 
though an extremely probable one. Even granting its truth, 
we only set /7 Pecorone and the Gesta Romanorum one step 
further back in the pedigree of the plot, for that they are in 
the direct line of its ancestry cannot be doubted. 

5. So far we have been dealing with the sources of the 
incidents only. Shakespeare owes nothing of his character- 
Possible proto. Grawing to J/ Pecorone or the Gesta. These 
types of Shylock. old tales are tales of incident almost entirely, 
and the persons who take part in them are but slightly out- 
lined, as slightly indeed as we find the characters in the 
Arabian Nights, the most famous of all collections of the kind. 


1 For details, refer to F. S. Boas, Shakspere and his Predecessors (Murray, 
London, 1896), page 215, note. 


INTRODUCTION. xi 


(a) As to the character of Shylock, it has been supposed 
that its germ is to be found in Christopher Marlowe’s play 
The Jew of Malta, which was written about  yyartowe's 
1589 or 1590. It is agreed that Shakespeare araéas. 
owed much in a general way to Marlowe, and particularly in 
versification. It is quite certain that Shakespeare knew his 
Jew of Malta, an exceedingly popular play, repeatedly acted 
about the time when 7%e Merchant of Venice was produced. 
Principal Ward, in his H/story of English Dramatic Litera- 
ture, has collected a number of parallels between the two 
plays, to which may be added one that he does not notice. 
[See note on iii. 2. 239.] 

But all the resemblances added together do not make the 
debt of Shakespeare in this case more than a very slight one. 
The stories of the two plays are completely different; and 
between the characters of Barabas of Malta and Shylock of 
Venice,—once granted that each is a Jew and a usurer, that 
each lives by the shore of the Mediterranean, and that each 
has an only daughter who is converted to Christianity,— 
there is only so far a parallel that they may be said never to 
meet. Charles Lamb has put the difference between them 
thus: 

“Shylock, in the midst of his savage purpose, is a man. 
His motives, feelings, resentments, have something human 
in them. ‘If you wrong us, shall we not revenge?’ Barabas 
is a mere monster, brought in with a large painted nose to 
please the rabble. He kills in sport, poisons whole nunneries, 
invents infernal machines. He is just such exhibition as, 
a century or two earlier, might have been played before the 
Londoners by the Royal Command, when a general pillage 
and massacre of the Hebrews had been resolved on by the 
Cabinet.” 

(4) One other source of possible suggestion to Shakespeare 
must be mentioned. It had long been supposed that, ex- 
cept by travelling, Shakespeare could not have 
had any personal knowledge of Jews, since they 
had been banished from England in 1290, and 
did not receive formal permission to return until the time of 


Dr. Roderigo 
Lopez. 


xii THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 


the Commonwealth. It has been proved, however, by Mr. 
S. L. Lee,! that Jews did find their way into England in 
Tudor times, and that in particular one named Lopez was 
for some twenty years, towards the latter end of the sixteenth 
century, a prominent figure in London and at Court. He 
was one of the first physicians of his day, and had the Earl 
of Leicester and, later, the Queen among his patients. In 
1594 he was hanged at Tyburn on the charge of conspiring 
with the King of Spain to poison, first, a Portuguese pretender 
named Axtonio,and secondly—as was alleged—Queen Eliza- 
beth herself. The history of Dr. Lopez must have been well 
known to Shakespeare, and may possibly have suggested 
other points besides the name of his enemy, Antonio. 

6. To recapitulate: the main outline of the incidents of 
the play is taken from one of Ser Giovanni’s tales in // 
Pecorone, with two main changes, a substitution 
and an addition. The substitution occurs in 
the nature of the test by which the Lady of Belmont was to 
be won: this, namely the choice among three caskets, Shake- 
speare took from the Gesta Romanorum. ‘The addition, the 
story of the Jew’s daughter and her elopement, may be 
paralleled in a few points from a story of Massuccio di 
Salerno. 

Lastly, while it is certain that in drawing the figure of 
Shylock, Shakespeare had in his mind—if only by way of 
contrast—Marlowe’s Baradas, it is also established that he 
may very well have had personal, first-hand acquaintance 
with Jews in his own country. 


Recapitulation. 


3. CONSTRUCTION OF THE PLOT. 


Content as Shakespeare was to take the main outline of his 
story from romances already existing, he was careful so to 
shape it in detail that it should work in with the temper and 
the motives of living men and women. 


With him, a story was 
“‘just a stuff 
To try the soul's strength on, educe the man”. 


1In The Gentleman's Magazine, Feb., 1880. 


INTRODUCTION. xiii 


But in pitting his heroes and heroines against circumstance, 
he brought circumstance into relation with them and their 
surroundings. Improbable, for example, as a string of bare 
incidents, the story of the Pound of Flesh becomes manifestly 
true in relation to Shylock and Antonio. In Mogens 

’ odifications of 
the play, the bond appears no longer as a chance the stories of the 
contract between strangers, but as a plan for 8 
revenge imposed by one bitter enemy on another in the guise 
of a ‘merry sport’, which, in the nature of the case, will never 
come to serious execution. The Christian merchant, fresh 
from denouncing interest, cannot draw back from a bond 
in which—to please him—no mention of interest is made. 
Moreover, he had only just pledged ‘his purse, his person, 
his extremest means’ to his dearest friend to help him to win 
the heroine of the caskets; generosity, therefore, will not 
allow him to hesitate. Finally, the Jew’s ferocity in after- 
wards exacting forfeit is made comprehensible by the loss of 
his daughter and his ducats. With such wonderful skill has 
this part of the story been handled, that readers are finally 
almost divided in sympathy between Antonio and his would- 
be murderer. 

The riddle of the caskets is similarly humanized. It be- 
comes part of a scheme designed by a dying father for the 
protection of an only child, a girl of incompar- ang of the Cas- 
able beauty, heiress to great riches. So for- kets. 
midable, therefore, are the conditions imposed, that all but 
the most earnest suitors are repelled from even an attempt at 
the enterprise (i. 2. 107), and, over and above the father’s 
inspired assurance (i. 2. 26) that it would never be solved by 
anyone who did not ‘rightly love’, the lottery constitutes a 
real test of insight and devotion. 

The stories of the Bond and the Caskets, thus transformed, 
are most artfully interwoven throughout (compare 1. 2. 100; 11. 
8. 39; 11. 9. 100), and at one point with notable pending of these 
skill. In 7 Pecorone, as mentioned above, ‘we stories. 
the successful suitor forgets his merchant friend for some 
time after marriage; but Shakespeare makes the bad news 
from Venice arrive before the wedding, so that the Trial of 


xiv THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 


the Caskets is, as it were, carried on into the Trial of the 
Bond, and Bassanio and Portia are not fully man and wife 
until after they have rescued the friend whose devotion had 
made their union possible. 

Shakespeare’s introduction into the play of yet a third 
story,—the Elopement of the Miser’s Daughter,—far from 
The Third Tale. unduly complicating the plot, seryes to knit 
that of the Miser’s together more closely its different events and 
Danaete characters. Shylock is thereby brought into 
fresh relations with Antonio and his friends. Even Launcelot 
the clown is no unimportant link ‘in the action. As servant 
first to the Jew and then to Bassanio, as go-between for 
Lorenzo and Jessica, and finally by his appearance at Bel- 
mont, he passes from one group to another, and makes a 
fantastic cross-thread in the embroidery of the plot.. So 
dependent are the three stories upon one another—from the 
first scene, in which they are all set going, to the last, in 
which they are all combined and concluded—that if Antonio 
had not signed the bond, Bassanio could not have gone 
a-wooing; if Bassanio had not won Portia, there would have 
been no one to save Antonio; if Lorenzo and Jessica had not 
wandered to Belmont, Portia could not so readily have quitted 
Belmont for Venice. 

It is by this vital interdependence of feelings and fortunes 
among the persons of the Drama, not by any abstract idea 
mad: ds or moral common to all the parts, that ‘unity 

e ‘unity of : ; 
action’inthe Of action’ is secured by Shakespeare. A useful 
aN mechanical help to a study of the method by 
which Shakespeare interlaces the various threads of interest 
in the play, is to make a list of the scenes, entering opposite 
each the place where it is laid, and the persons who take part 
in it. Inspection of such a list will show that the action 
passes constantly from Belmont to Venice and back again. 
By these transitions the different ‘intrigues’ of the plot are 
kept moving, and, further, the effect of lapse of time is pro- 
Management of Guced. It is one of the cleverest points in the 
time and place. stage-craft of the play, that the formidable period 
of three months is made to pass, and is felt to be passing, 


INTRODUCTION. XV 


and yet we are nowhere conscious of a gap in the action.! 
This result is produced, as was pointed out by Professor 
Wilson in reference to Othello, by the use of ‘double time’. 
That is to say, phrases implying short spaces of time in the 
future, are combined with others implying long spaces of time 
in the past, in such a way that both the continuity and the 
lapse of time are kept before our minds. Thus from i. 1. 70 
and i. 3. 166 we should gather that Bassanio is to meet Lorenzo 
and Shylock again the same day; but from Jessica’s words in 
lil. 2. 281 ff., and indeed from the very circumstances of the 
case, it is clear that a long interval must have elapsed between 
Acts i. and ii. So, again, from the last few lines of ii. 2. 
one would suppose that the farewell feast before Bassanio’s 
departure is referred to, and that he starts that night; yet, a 
little while before (line 104), he had said “ put these liveries 
to making”, a matter requiring some time. No sooner has 
Bassanio started than the indications of the lapse of time 
become more frequent (“ Let good Antonio look he keep his 
day”, ii. 8. 25) (“Yet it lives there unchecked that”, &c., 
ili. I. 2), and from line 83 in the last-mentioned scene we 
learn that Tubal has been from Venice to Genoa and back 
since Jessica’s flight; so that we are quite prepared to find 
that on the day of Bassanio’s choice among the caskets he 
receives news that the bond is already forfeit. Yet, when 
we come to inquire minutely how and where Bassanio had 
spent the three months, we find—as we deserve—that the 
inquiry is futile. It is important, at the outset, to recognize 
that some lines of Shakespeare study lead to nothing; and 
to grasp the reason of their failure. They assume that the 
poet worked in a spirit which was, as a matter of fact, foreign 
to him. For the purposes of a play, matters of time and 
place are stage-properties of the same kind as paste-board 
crowns and paper trees. To make them ‘real’ in minute 
detail is to make everything round them false, just as to put 
a ‘real’ ring on the finger of a painted portrait destroys the 
truth of the picture. 


1 Vide Furness’ brilliant note on ‘Double Time’, as used in this play and in the 
‘Agamemnon’ of AXschylus. Variorum Ed., 1892, pages 338 to 345. 


Xvi | THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 


Thus, to ask where Belmont precisely was, is to put a 
question which has no answer. Shakespeare has no further 
localized Belmont than to put it on the mainland of Italy, 
apparently on the sea-coast, at no great distance from Venice 
on one side and Padua on the other. 

It is enough for a play that its indications of time and 
place should ‘semblably cohere’. Zhe Merchant of Venice 
will repay endless study as a piece of dramatic construction, 
not from any attempt which it contains at historical or geo- 
graphical ‘realism’, nor from any symmetrical formula con- 
necting its several parts, but from the perfect lucidity with 
which it sets forth how, at a crisis of their fate, a number of 
people became involved with one another, how they severally 
bore themselves, and how by the action of each the fortune 
of all was determined. ; 


4.'THE PERSONS OF ‘THE PLAY, 


Thoroughly to enjoy Shakespeare, it is necessary to be- 
come intimate with the people of his plays. Intimacy is 
impossible at second-hand; it must be gained for one’s self 
and gradually, with Shakespeare’s people as with others, by 
seeing what they do, by hearing them talk, and by noting 
what their neighbours feel and say about them; in a word, 
by living with them for a while. After the first reading of a 
play has given an understanding of its main outlines, it is 
well to take the chief persons separately, and to observe— 

(i) The precise share which so and so has in the action. 

_ (ii) Sayings of his which seem to tell most about him. 

(iii) Any noticeable opinions of him expressed by enemy 
or friend. 

After bringing, in this fashion, our own notions to a point, 
we can enjoy the views of critics and commentators. A great 
delight waiting to reward anyone who will in this way make 
a careful analysis of Zhe Merchant of Venice, is the reading 
of Mrs. Jameson’s study of ‘ Portia’ in her Characteristics of 
Women, and of Hazlitt’s view of ‘Shylock’ in his Characters 


of Shakespeare's Plays. 
(M330) 


INTRODUCTION, XVil 


The following notes on the various characters of the play 
are not intended to supersede the student’s own analysis, but 
to be read after such an analysis has been made, for the pur- 
pose of comparison. Where a blank has been left between 
brackets, the student is meant to fill-in the reference to act, 
scene, and line, for himself. 

1. (2) SHYLOCK was ‘old’ (iv. 1. 168) at the time of the events 
which made him famous. We know a good deal of his 
history. He had wandered, in the way of his q3. nistory and 
trade, as far north as Frankfort [ ], Position in Venice. 
but settled at Venice, whose laws, liberal as times went 
towards aliens, enabled him to follow his business securely. 
He had only one child, a daughter, called Jessica; his wife, 
‘Leah, must have died soon after the child’s birth, for, while 
Shylock remembered her fondly, and treasured a ring she 
had given him when he was a bachelor [ ], Jessica 
never speaks in a way that suggests she had known her 
mother. Jessica kept house for her father with the help of a 
single servant, in a style—forced on her by Shylock—of the 
severest simplicity. 

By trade he was a ‘usurer’, that is, he lent money out at 
interest. He had acquired great wealth, partly by knowledge 
of his business and of the commercial position of those with 
whom he dealt (i. 3), partly—as his enemies asserted—by 
taking advantage of his clients’ weaknesses and mercilessly 
‘selling them up’ if they were unpunctual in payment 
(iii. 3. 22). Devoted as he was to money-making, his race 
and his religion occupied quite as much of his thoughts. 
The Jews in Shakespeare’s Venice were allowed a synagogue 
to worship in [ ]; they were obliged to wear a 
distinctive dress, and, no doubt, lived (both by their own 
choice and by compulsion) in a quarter of their own. They 
were granted unusual privileges before the law: the Duke 
himself went in pursuit of Lorenzo and Jessica at Shylock’s 
bidding [ ], and it was again the Duke in full court 
who would not wrest the law against the foreigner. But in 
matters of ordinary intercourse they had to endure, even at 
the hands of the noblest among the Christians, the bitterest 

( M 330) B 


XVili THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 


contempt and most intolerable personal insult [ ]. 
To this Shylock! replied with a hatred all the fiercer for being 
concealed, and with an exclusiveness all the haughtier that 
he found himself despised by men whom he regarded as his 
inferiors in religion and in race. Shylock regarded his nation 
as ‘sacred’ [ ], and greatly esteemed his tribe; 
in imagination he was constantly back in Palestine, with 
the folk of his sacred Scriptures. He quotes Jacob, whose 
‘wise mother’ [ ] gave him his position among 
the patriarchs, as an example of heaven-prospered trading ; 
his servant he thinks of as the offspring of Hagar; pork 
reminds him of the conjuring of the prophet of Nazareth; in 
his enemy he sees a resemblance to the ‘ publicans’ who 
had vexed the souls of his countrymen sixteen centuries 
before; his very oaths (“by Jacob’s staff”, “by our holy Sab- 
bath”, “cursed be my tribe”) speak of his people and’his 
faith. 
(6) How ought we to feel towards Shylock? The vast 
difference of opinion on the point is reflected in the diverse 
interpretations of the character which have held 
eating ease the stage. In the last century Macklin laid 
character by ac- stress upon his ‘snarling malignity’, and pre- 
tors and critics. sented a frightful figure of devilish cunning and 
hatred—a combination of mere miser and murderer—which 
is described as follows by a spectator. “The first words 
which he utters are spoken slowly and deliberately: ‘Three 
thousand ducats’. The ¢k and s twice occurring, and the 
last s after the ¢ have a lickerish sound from Macklin’s lips, 
as if he were tasting the ducats and all that they can buy; 
this speech creates for the man, upon his first appearance, 
a prepossession which is sustained throughout. Three such 
words, thus spoken, and at the very first, reveal a whole char- 
acter. In the scene in which he first misses his daughter he 
appears hatless, with hair all flying, some of it standing up 
straight, a hand’s-breadth high, just as if it had been lifted 


1 A poem of Browning’s is often a most helpful commentary to a play of Shake- 
speare’s. To understand Shylock better, read Browning’s Holy Cross Day, and 
Lilippo Baldinucct. 


INTRODUCTION. xix 


up by a breeze from the gallows. Both hands are doubled — 
up, and his gestures are quick and convulsive. To see a 
man thus moved, who had been hitherto a calm determined 
villain, is fearful.” } | 

On the other hand, in this century, Kean and Irving have 
followed out that view of his character which is summed up 
in Hazlitt’s fine phrase: “He seems the depositary of the 
vengeance of his race”. This view, extended so far as to 
make Shylock a martyr, has been wonderfully expressed by 
Heine (a Jew himself) in a superb criticism of the play, trans- 
lated on pages 449-452 of Furness’ Variorum Edition. A 
few sentences from it are given here. (Heine is visiting 
Venice.) “I looked round everywhere on the Rialto to see 
if I could find Shylock. I found him nowhere on the Rialto, 
and I determined to seek my old acquaintance in the syna- 
gogue. The Jews were just then celebrating their Day of 
Atonement, and they stood enveloped in their white talars, 
with uncanny motions of the head, looking almost like an 
assemblage of ghosts. There the poor Jews had stood, fast- 
ing and praying from earliest morning; since the evening 
before, they had taken neither food nor drink. Although I 
looked all round the synagogue, I nowhere discovered the 
face of Shylock. But towards evening, when, according to 
the Jewish faith, the gates of heaven are shut, and no prayer 
can then obtain admittance, I heard a voice, with a ripple of 
tears that were never wept by eyes. It was a sob that could 
come only from a breast that held in it all the martyrdom 
which, for eighteen centuries, had been borne by a whole 
tortured people. It was the death-rattle of a soul sinking down 
dead-tired at heaven’s gates. And I seemec to know the 
voice, and I felt that I had heard it long ago, when in utter 
despair it moaned out, then as now, ‘Jessica, my girl!’” 

(c) Thus actors and critics differ as to the proportion in 
which hatred and pity and fear should be blended in our feel- 
ings towards Shylock. One error we must guard against from 
the first, that, namely, of supposing that Shakespeare meant 


1 Quoted, p. 374 of Furness’ Variorum Edition, from a letter written in 1775 
by Lichtenberg, a German visitor to England. 


xX THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 


either to attack or to defend the Jews as a nation in the 
The point of Person of Shylock. Writing { with a purpose?’, 
view for sound in this narrow sense, is not in his spirit. A 
picententts Jew came into the story, and Shakespeare has 
taken care that we should understand both him and those 
with whom he dealt. With modern Englishmen, among 
whom Jews take a foremost place for public spirit and gener- 
osity, the difficulty is not so much to be fair to Shylock as to 
conceive the feelings with which Antonio regarded him. 

(2) Todo so we must follow carefully the indications which 
C Shakespeare gives us. Shylock was hated for 

auses of i i i je i gos 
hatred towards four mainreasons—his prideof race, his religious 
Jews. opinions, his mean and shabby habit of life, 
and his way of doing business. 

1. As regards the first point, it is clear that the refusal of 
Jews in the middle ages to eat and drink with Christians, and 

Their racial their abhorrence of intermarriage with them, 

exclusiveness. were not only bitterly resented, but further laid 
Jews open to horrible suspicions. The penalty for seclusion 
of life is unrefuted calumny.2 The ghastly legend of St. 
Hugh of Lincoln was spread in various forms all over 
Europe, and in some parts is still believed. And even where 
the hatred for a people who kept so strictly apart did not take 
so hideous a shape, it appears in the not unnatural belief that 
Jews were an unkind? and uncharitable race, who did not 
consider themselves bound by the same obligations of honour 
and good feeling towards Gentiles as towards one another. 
. (Compare what Launce says in Zwo Gentlemen of Verona: 
' “Go with me to the alehouse, if not thou art an Hebrew, a 
Jew .... because thou hast not so much charity in thee as to 
go to the ale with a Christian” —with 7he Merchant of Venice, 
i. 3. 32, and ii. 5. 14.) | 

2. A very similar opinion arose in matters of religion. 


1Mr. F. S. Boas’ Shakespeare and his Predecessors, p. 226, in a most interest- 
ing study of Shylock, speaks of the speech in iii. 1. 44 as a ‘majestic vindication 
of Judaism’. Should not this be ‘of human nature’? 

2 Compare the stories told of the retirement of Tiberius, Frederick the Great, 
and our own William ITI. 

3 This belief appears as early as Juvenal, cf. Saz. xiv. 103, 104. 


INTRODUCTION. xxi 


In days when the story of the New Testament was chiefly 
known to people through miracle plays, the fact Religious 
that St. Paul and St. John, and the founder of Feeling. 
Christianity himself, had been Jews, became forgotten or 
overlooked. Even to those who could and did read their 
Bibles, the language of the Fourth Gospel, in which ‘the 
Jews’ are constantly mentioned in opposition to Christ (see 
St. John v. 15; vi. 41, etc.) might easily be misunderstood. 
Continual dwelling on the story of the crucifixion, without 
reference to the rest of Jewish history, led to a belief that 
the Jews were an exceptionally unfeeling and cruel race, 
and their supposed hardness of heart passed into a proverb. 
(Compare Launce again in 7wo Gentlemen of Verona, act ii. 
sc. 3, l. 12: “A Jew would have wept to have seen our 
parting”; and Richard I/,, act ii. 1. 55, “ Stubborn Jewry ”.) 
So that Antonio looks upon a piece of seeming kindness on 
Shylock’s part as a sign that he may yet ‘turn Christian’ 
[ ]. Conversely, the Jewish refusal of Christianity 
was regarded not as intellectual negation, but as a piece of 
the stiff-necked perversity with which their own prophets had 
charged them. It must also be remembered that religious 
intolerance was, in “the ages of conflict”, almost universal, 
and was displayed by the Jews themselves on a great scale 
during that short period of their history when they had the 
power of the sword over aliens in race and religion.2, Some 
of the beliefs and rites of medizeval Christianity appeared to 
Jews to be idolatrous and blasphemous, and towards them it 
was lawful and right in their eyes to feel a ‘lodged hate’ and 
‘a loathing’. (See page 411 of Jewish Life in the Middle 
Ages, by I. Abrahams; Macmillan, 1896.) 

3. The widespread belief that Jews were miserly and squalid 


11s it not possible to see traces of this in the description of Shylock’s conduct 
at the trial? Compare ‘‘I stand here for law” with ‘‘The Jews answered him, 
We have a law, and by our law he ought to die” (St. John xix. 7); and again, 
**My deeds upon my head” with ‘‘ His blood be on us and on our children” (St. 
Matthew xxvii. 25); and again, ‘“‘ Would any of the stock of Barvadas had been 
her husband, rather than a Christian !” 

2In this respect Shylock’s spirit is far more truly representative than the 
‘undenominationalism’ of Lessing’s Mathan the Wise. 


xxii THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 


in their mode of life arose, no doubt, mainly from the fact 
Alleged miserli- that for many centuries it was as much as 
ness of Jews. their lives were worth to give signs of super- 
fluous wealth. 

But this unlovely hardness of life was only assumed by 
compulsion. In reality, Jews have always been fond of a rich 
and even luxurious style of living. (See Jewish Life in the 
Middle Ages, chapters viii. and xvi.) 

4. We cannot understand this ground of hatred against 
Shylock without remembering that both Jews and Christians 
Odium againss Were forbidden by their ecclesiastical law to take 

usurers. interest on money from those of their own faith. 
But Jews might take it from ‘the stranger’ (Deut. xxiii. 20), 
and so it came about that when commerce increased and 
loans began to be an essential part of its machinery, Jews 
naturally assumed the position of money-lenders. This conse- 
quence was hastened by the very persecutions to which they 
were subject. The cruel laws which in many places forbade 
their plying any trade or profession recognized among Chris- 
tians (see chaps. xi. and xii. of Abrahams’ Jewish Life in the 
Middle Ages) drove them to usury. The necessity for having 
their property in such a shape that it could be easily ‘lifted’ 
in case of expulsion or attack, forced them to accumulate 
wealth in the form of gold and precious stones. Practice 
quickly made them experts at the financier’s trade, and from 
their very position as aliens they were able to make that dis- 
tinction between monetary and amicable relations without 
which extended commerce, as we know it now, is impossible. 
But the necessity for the trade did not make it popular, and 
the laws against usurers, by increasing the lender’s risk, kept 
up the rate of interest, and aggravated the evil. 

Shylock was thus one of a body who in religion and in 
society kept themselves aloof in repulsive isolation, who 
not only declined but abhorred the religious beliefs of their 
neighbours, and who, while taught by persecution not to show 
signs of wealth, were at the same time accumulating precious 
metals, and obtaining a great hold over individual Christians 
by their system of loans. 


INTRODUCTION. xxiii 


(e) In all this we see abundant explanation of such a feeling 
as is expressed in its most extravagant form in Marlowe’s 
Jew of Malta. ‘The humanity with which |... 

f umanity of 
Shakespeare draws the portraiture of Shylock Shakespeare’s 
is therefore all the more striking. The Jews  P°™* 
hatred for Antonio is not represented as mere ‘motiveless 
malignity’, but as the result of injured patriotism, of com- 
mercial jealousy [ ], and of resentment aroused by 
repeated personal insults. 

He speaks with tenderness of a relic of his dead wife. It 
is not hinted that he used any further unkindness towards 
his daughter and his servant than to make their life extremely 
bleak and dull; to Jessica his tone is not harsh, and he trusts 
her—though with some misgivings—with all his keys. His 
fury over her robbery and desertion of him for the sake of 
a Christian lover is very comprehensible, and the frightful 
savagery with which it is expressed cannot fairly be taken 
‘literally, any more than Bassanio’s willingness to offer Portia 
in sacrifice to save Antonio. Shylock’s last reference to 


Jessica shows fatherly feeling [ ], and in Launcelot 
he recognizes kindness with appreciation [ ]. 
His great appeal to human nature [ ] is irresistible, 


though he fails to see its application to his own religious 
and racial exclusiveness. 

(/) In summary, Shylock is a miser, but a miser possess- 
ing great strength of resolution and high powers of intellect. 
His main fault is not a want of feeling, but @ summary of 
misapplication of it. So far is he from being of his character. 
an insensible, flinty character, that he rather appears exces- 
sively passionate and irritable. His cruelty is not that of a 
cold heart, but the more terrible cruelty of perverted and 
outraged sensitiveness. It comes nearer the rage of Othello 
than the malice of Iago. And even at his worst, when every 
other feeling has been absorbed in the one longing to feel his 
knife in his enemy’s heart, even then the concentration of his 
purpose, the clear force of his understanding, make him a 
figure terrible indeed, but not despicable. There wanted but 
another stroke to raise him to the dignity of possessing 


xxiv THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 


‘The unconquerable will 
And study of revenge, immortal hate, 
And courage never to submit or yield, 
And what is else not to be overcome”’. 


(g) But his spirit bends at last, and the tale ends without 
atragedy. To think of his fate as hopelessly miserable is to 
force modern notions into our reading. We 
must remember that to Shakespeare’s audiences, 
conversion, even though compulsory, would mean the possi- 
bility of salvation for Shylock. Since adherence to Judaism 
was thought to rest not on spiritual conviction but on obstinate 
temper, Shylock’s becoming a Christian would be regarded 
as a recovery from sullenness. The remission of half his 
goods would appear generous. The absorption of so formid- 
able an alien into the body of the community, the marriage 
of his daughter to a Venetian, and the ultimate diffusion of 
his wealth among those willing to make a cheerful use of it, 
would—in those days—seem the happiest solution possible 
of the difficulties and dangers raised by his existence. 


After a study of Shylock and Jessica, it is interesting to go back to Jvanhoe, 
and to renew one’s recollections of Isaac of York and Rebecca. In what points is 
the novelist’s portraiture weaker than the poet’s? 


His fate. 


2. PORTIA, at the opening of the story, appears without 
father or mother, or indeed any relative nearer than her 
cousin [ ], the famous jurisconsult of Padua, Doc- 
tor Bellario. Of her mother! we hear not a word; it seems 
she must have died in Portia’s infancy. Her father, a wealthy 
The childhood Italian noble, Lord of Belmont, had educated 
of Portia. his only child with the utmost care, to speak 
Latin and French as well as Italian [ ], to under- 
stand law, and to manage the affairs of a great property. 
He lived long enough (i. 2. 97) to see her of a marriageable 
age, and to notice the passionate admiration roused in men 
of every kind by her high spirit, brilliant wit, and ‘ beauty 

1 Many of Shakespeare’s heroines are motherless:—Isabella, Beatrice, Rosa- 
lind, Imogen, Miranda, Cordelia, Viola, Helena, Ophelia. He was interested, 
perhaps, rather in the relation of mother to soz, and of father to daughter. Or 


he felt that—had their mothers been there—his maidens could never have fallen 
into so many perils and troubles. 


INTRODUCTION. xXV 


like the sun’, placed as these qualities were, in circumstances 
hardly less romantic and splendid than those of a princess of 
fairyland. But, before a marriage could be arranged, he was 
seized with mortal sickness. On his deathbed [ ] 
he willed that his daughter’s hand should—under restriction 
severe enough to keep away mere adventurers—be won by a 
‘lottery’. This ‘lottery’, in so far as it was matter of chance, 
would be—so it was thought in those days—under the ruling 
of Providence, and so far as it was matter of choice, would 
be such as to test the insight and sincerity of her lovers. 
Thus was Portia, hardly yet out of her girlhood, left heiress 
of Belmont. The fame of her person and character, her 
wealth, and the hazard by which she was to be won, drew 
suitors from many lands. She watched them come with 
amusement, and with keenest penetration, for per loyalty to 
she knew the points of a man. But she was her father’s will. 
loyal to her father’s will, and to the oath (iii. 2. 11) which she 
had taken to fulfil it. Her loyalty was proof even against her 
own feeling that she had already seen (i. 2. Ioo), in a young 
Venetian, a scholar and a soldier, of gentle blood but no 
estate, the man to whom she could give the whole of herself. 
This decisive sense of honour was blended in Portia with 
a trained intelligence and a sense of humour. It is this 
union of qualities which marks her action ; 

. . €arness in 
throughout. It enables ber to see quite straight thought and in 
at moments of crisis, as when Antonio’s letter *““°™ 
comes on the eve of her marriage. By virtue of it she 
discerns in an instant a cu/-de-sac from a path, and loses no 
time by trying impracticable ways. Her wit is equal to a 
thousand shifts, but her practised reason and her sound 
feeling show her the only right one. The end once in view, 
she adjusts the means to it, and sets all in motion with a 
quickness and a swing and a lightness of touch that stamp 
her an artist in action. Her alacrity is beforehand with 
danger, and she beats difficulty by power of combination. 
To her husband she gives herself with a generous complete- 
ness which, in one so clear-sighted, makes her words after 
Bassanio’s choice the most moving thing of the kind in 


Xxvi THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 


literature. Her solution of the problem of the bond, by a 
bold reduction to the absurd, is of a piece with that perfect 
clearness of character which appears in Portia sometimes as 
wit and grace, sometimes as courage, sometimes as penetra- 
ting insight. 

This extreme directness in thought and action gives to 
Portia an almost formidable air, not diminished by the trained 
Portia is for. Skill with which she approaches the discussion 
midable; of an abstract principle. In these respects she 
is unlike many others of Shakespeare’s women. It needs all 
her wisdom to keep her wit within bounds, and she is some- 
times too unmerciful to affectation (whether in a Prince of 
Arragon or in one of her own pages) to be perfectly courteous. 
But the warmth and openness of her heart, and an extreme 
generosity of feeling, kindle her amazing cleverness into tact, 
and make her great gifts available for the ordinary offices of 
+ ._,. life. Again and again she relieves embarrass- 

ut her friendli- é . 

ness savesher ment and meets a difficult moment with a grace 
from pedantry. 54 perfect as to show, besides dexterity, true 
goodness of nature (¢.g. in her words to the Prince of Morocco 
when he makes apology for his complexion; or to Bassanio 
when, by a stinging pun, she draws attention from her own 
generosity in despatching him at once to the help of Antonio). 
Thus, although she could preach eloquently (iv. 1. 178, ff.), 
and argue most forcibly, she knows that sermons and argu- 
ments are comparatively futile (i. 2.14). Though from many 
indications we see she was sincerely religious, she would not 
be content with o#/y praying when she could work as well 
(compare v. I. 3I, with iii. 4. 30 to the end of the scene), 
And her delightful sense of humour saves her from any touch 
of self-conceit. Her spirit of comradeship and friendliness 
keeps her always human and kindly. 

No analysis can explain the charm and power of a char- 

acter like Portia’s. Wecan perhaps best realize 
pestove rg our feeling about her by the assurance we 
high and noble have that she would do nobly always, but that 
spirit. iy 

the full greatness of her qualities could only 
be shown in some crisis needing prompt and courageous 


INTRODUCTION. XXVii 


action. She had, indeed, along with all womanly virtues, a 
larger share than most women have of some qualities com- 
monly considered masculine, which ought perhaps to be 
regarded as the common property of women and men :—the 
power to see all round a point of abstract theory, and the will 
to take and keep a direct line in practice. We feel certain 
that were Bassanio called away to the wars, and Belmont 
besieged by his enemy, Portia could with undismayed cheer- 
fulness hold his house for him, command his men, keep them 
in heart with jests more humorous than Launcelot’s, see that 
her children were jn due order and attentive to their studies, 
and yet, all the while, have time to discomfit her domestic 
chaplain in quiet hours of chess and theology. 


3. BASSANIO.—Bassanio’s character is to be judged less 
from what he himself says or does than from the reflected 
picture which we get of him in the words and actions of other 
people. The two main points we know about him are that 
he is Antonio’s chosen friend and Portia’s chosen lover. 
Antonio—who knew all Venice—only loves the world for 
Bassanio’s sake (ii. 8. 50), and for him Portia, courted by all 
nations and languages, would be trebled twenty times her- 
self (iii. 2. 154). Nerissa lets us know that he is a scholar 
and a soldier, and that “he, of all the men that ever my 
foolish eyes looked upon, was the best deserving a fair 
lady”. Gratiano ‘must’ travel with him, even at the cost 
of a more subdued behaviour. And Launcelot Gobbo, who 
was too lively a lad not to be an excellent judge of a man 
when he saw one, thinks his fortune is made when he gets 
into his service, poor though Bassanio was. When he appears 
in company, other folks pay him a kind of deference which 
is all the more striking that it seems unconscious, and has 
no possible motive but to express natural feel- His force of 
ing. Thus even by his familiar friends he is character. 
addressed as ‘My Lord Bassanio’, ‘Signior Bassanio’. He 
becomes, without effort, the centre of any group in which he 
finds himself. The secret of his power is also the explan- 
ation of the comparatively small show which his actual words 


XXVill THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 


and deeds make in a representation of the play—for of 
all qualities his are the least imitable by an actor. These 
qualities are simplicity, directness, and courage, combined 
with a perfect ease and kindliness of bearing and manner. 
Heavily in debt, he takes neither of the two easy alterna- 
tives for the poor man,—an impracticable stiffness, or a 
conscious humility, but borrows from his rich friend and 
wooes his wealthy mistress with such a natural and manly 
frankness as endears him further to them both. The enigma 
of the three caskets he solves because he ‘rightly loves’, and 
will hazard all to win. He has the gift, by nature and breed- 
ing, of doing and saying the right thing at the right time, 
the tact that is founded upon good sense and a kind heart. 
There is a fund of quiet masterfulness in his 
manner of giving orders: “ You may do so; but 
let it be so hasted that supper be ready at the farthest by five 
‘of the clock. See these letters delivered; put the liveries to 
making, and desire Gratiano to come anon to my lodging” 
(ii. 2. 104). With what fine discretion he guides his words 
in checking the excitable Gratiano! How plainly his firmer 
will and clearer sense come out in contrast with that volatile 
but otherwise delightful character! The effect of the splendid 
simplicity of his qualities is heightened by the external mag- 
nificence of the rivals to whom he is preferred. Some have 
! questioned Portia’s insight, and maintained that 
reanbabe ny ge she ‘threw herself away’ on Bassanio. But 
eee indeed she, like the rest of the world, might 
have said to him much what Kent said to Lear, 

“You have that in your countenance which I would fain call 
master”. “ What’s that?” “Authority.” It is just this 
‘authority’, or unconscious control, which, in a man, is the 
supreme quality. Oliver Wendell Holmes says, in speaking 
of a similar choice: “It takes a very ¢rvwe man to be a fitting 
companion for a woman of genius, but not a very great one. 
I am not sure that she will not embroider her ideal better on 
a plain ground than on one with a brilliant pattern already 
worked in its texture. But as the very essence of genius is 
truthfulness, contact with realities (which are always ideas 


Masterfulness. 


INTRODUCTION. Xxix: 


behind shows of form or language), nothing is so contemp- 
tible as falsehood and pretence in its eyes. Now, portia’s choice 
it is not easy to find a perfectly true woman, and_ °f Bassanio. 

it is very hard to find a perfectly true man. And a woman 
of genius, who has the sagacity to choose such a one as her 
companion, shows more of the divine gift in so doing than 
in her finest talk or her most brilliant work of letters or of 
art” (from chapter xii. of Zhe Professor at the Breakfast- 
table). 


4. ANTONIO was one of the chief men of that great 
Mediterranean city, ‘whose merchants were princes, whose 
traffickers were the honourable of the earth’. he spirit of 
Now and again in the course of the play, an Antonio’strading. 
odd term or phrase brings back the very look and colour of 
that old Venetian trading: ‘argosies’ that ‘richly come to 
harbour suddenly’, ‘pirates’ and ‘land-thieves’, ‘many a 
purchased slave’, ‘silks’ and ‘spices’, a ‘turquoise’ and a 
‘diamond’ that ‘cost two thousand ducats’, ‘a beauteous 
scarf veiling an Indian beauty’, ‘ parrots’ of ‘ commendable 
discourse’, and ‘a wilderness of monkeys’. This last has 
a touch as of Sinbad himself in it, and, throughout, the com- 
merce is not confined or sedentary; there is a whole volume 
of ‘voyages’ in the very names of the places from which 
Antonio’s tall ships carry their rich lading— 


‘¢From Tripolis, from Mexico, and England, 
From Lisbon, Barbary, and India”. 


The brisk movement of the piece appears in the medley of 
nations that find their way to Belmont—Neapolitan, French- 
man, Saxon, Spaniard, Englishman, and Moor. It has 
been objected to Bassanio that he makes love in the spirit 
of a trader, but it would be less misleading to say that 
Antonio trades in the spirit of a lover, like Jason and his 
Argonauts. 

Magnanimity, indeed, is the inmost quality of the ‘royal’ 
merchant. He lives to do great kindnesses greatly, 


XXX THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 


‘*the kindest man, 
The best condition’d and unwearied spirit 
In doing courtesies, and one in whom 
The ancient Roman honour more appears 
Than any that draws breath in Italy” [ ]. 


He associates by preference, not with merchants, but with 
a soldier and a scholar like Bassanio, and his friends Lorenza 
His magnani- 2nd Gratiano. He is well known at court. The 
mity. Duke and ‘the magnificoes of greatest port’ 
[ ] are interested in his welfare. Consistently with 
this, he seems not to be greatly concerned with his merchan- 
dise except as the material of his bounty; he spends large 
sums in relieving poor debtors from difficulty (iil. 3. 23); and. 
he plainly says no more than the truth in telling Bassanio 
that to question the heartiness of his affection would hurt 
him more than to waste the whole of his fortune [ 

His spirit is serious and grave, subject to fits of melancholy, 
full of sensibility and tenderness. He is*content to enjoy 
His sensibility life through his friend (ii. 8. 50). He ‘embraces” 
and seriousness. heaviness, and tears come readily to his eyes, 
So full of anxious kindness is his manner that his enemy 
can describe him as ‘fawning’ [ ]. It is charac- 
teristic of him that he is sincerely resigned at the near 
prospect of dying; constitutional diffidence, perhaps physical 
weakness, make him feel that he is ‘a tainted wether of the 
flock, meetest for death’, one of ‘the weakest kind of fruit?’ 
[ |. He rather discourages the attempts of his friends 
to save him (ili. 3. 19; iv. I. 77), and is satisfied to think 
that Bassanio will live still and write his epitaph. It is in 
keeping with his quiet temperament that he should put aside, 
almost angrily, the notion of his being in love (i. 1. 46). He 
is a bachelor ‘ predestinate’, and when we lose sight of him 
at Belmont it is with a feeling that his main interest for the 
future will be the duties of a godfather. 

It shocks us to find Antonio treating Shylock with gross 
personal discourtesy. Nothing indeed could have expressed 
so vividly the feeling of the time towards a Jewish usurer, as 
insult and violence from the stately and amiable Antonio. 


INTRODUCTION. Xxxi 


The historical explanation of this feeling is suggested else- 
where.! 


5. THE MINOR CHARACTERS.—1I. Of the other persons 
of the play, Jessica and Lorenzo influence the story most. 
Jessica we are to think of as scarcely more than 
a child. Her mother had apparently been dead 
some years. Bright, winsome, and vivacious, Jessica feels 
she is not her father’s daughter [ ], at least in ‘man- 
ners’. Fond of movement and company, she saw no one at 
home but such as Tubal and Chus, grim men of business 
with whom her father talked of his design on the life of 
Antonio [ ]. Such a scheme must have terrified 
her as much as his dislike of masques and fifes repelled her 
[ ]. Out of Shylock’s house she passes as flightily 
and almost as unfeelingly as a Redes bird that leaves the 
nest [ |. It is not ‘her way’ to scruple or reflect. 
She takes jewels and ducats as lightly as she goes herself; she 
had never seen any pleasant use made of either, and, if she 
thought at all, she may have thought her father would not 
miss what he never wore nor spent. She talks very much too 
freely to Launcelot Gobbo. Her natural recklessness of temper 
appears from the style in which she makes the money fly at 
Genoa. (What kind of sitting was it, at which she spent 
fourscore ducats?) It is exquisitely characteristic in her to 
buy a monkey for a pet; no doubt Lorenzo took care it was 
left behind in Genoa. On her first arrival at Belmont she 
becomes amusingly ‘ proper’ and quiet. Portia was a reve- 
lation to her, and in her presence, as at the sound of sweet 
music, Jessica’s ‘spirits are attentive’ and she cannot be 
‘merry’. Her words of enthusiastic praise to Lorenzo [ 

] are the least inadequate that have ever been uttered 
about ‘my Lord Bassanio’s wife’. They show that she really 
is susceptible to strong feeling when she meets what is super- 
latively good. Possibly Lorenzo’s confidence that she is 
‘true’ as well as ‘ fair and wise’ [ ] may, after all, 
be realized, if circumstances favour her. 


Jessica. 


1See page xx. 


xxxii THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 


Her husband, though possessed of deeper feelings and of 
much more power of thought than Jessica, yet looks on life 
from much the same point of view. He is 
intensely alive to delight, whether in natural 
beauty or in music. But his taste is so sound that, even by 
moonlight, his is a ‘ waking bliss’, full of ‘sober certainty’ as 
well as of the richest poetic rapture. Twice, in our short 
acquaintance with him, his sense of humour saves sentiment 
from extravagance or unreality (ili. 5. 58; v. 1.15). He is, 
as he admits, ‘unthrift’, and we may conjecture with much 
probability that his intimacy with Jessica began in visits to 
Shylock for severely business purposes. But the future of 
the pair in matters of finance is assured by the fact that they 
are to have a kind and careful trustee in the person of the 
Merchant of Venice himself. 

2. Of the rest, Gratzano is talkative and gregarious to a 
fault, but he is excellent company and says some admirable 
things. There is, as Hazlitt says;a whole volume | 
of philosophy in his sermon against silence 
[ ], and his words in ii. 6. 8 ff show imagination. 
A man of his qualities may be tiresome in a small party, but 
is invaluable in a company of a dozen or more, where his 
loquacity can be ‘absorbed’. His wife will be the best possible 
match for him. Their conversation may indeed ‘overlap’ 
somewhat, for Nerissa has her own reflections on life and 
can ‘pronounce them well’ and ‘in good sentences’. But 
they are both too good-natured for the house ever to be 
seriously ‘unquiet’ (iv. 1. 288). 

3. On the Princes of Morocco and Arragon, see notes to 
the scenes in which they appear. 

4. Launcelot Gobbo is the ‘wag’ of the piece. His humour 
consists chiefly in a misuse of long words and in the liveliest 
animal spirits. There is less wit in what he 
says than is the case with any other of the 
prominent ‘clowns’ or ‘fools’ in Shakespeare. He is ready 
for any mischief, ‘a huge feeder’, and so averse to ‘ working 
between meals’ that Shylock has to employ three similes in 
two lines (‘snail’, ‘drone’, and ‘wild cat’) to express the 


Lorenzo. 


Gratiano. 


Launcelot. 


INTRODUCTION. ; bee te 


extent of his laziness. But even Shylock recognises that he 
is ‘kind enough’, and Bassanio takes to him immediately 
[ } 

5. The characters of Sa/arino and Sa/anzo are not further 
defined than that they are Venetian gentleman, friends of 
Antonio and Bassanio, and full of the ordinary feeling of the 
time against Jewish usurers. 


5. DATE OF THE COMPOSITION OF TH 
PLAY. ; 


The Merchant of Venice was first printed in 1600, when it 
appeared by itself in two quarto editions, one, called the First 
Quarto, published by James Roberts, the other, the Second 
Quarto, by Thomas Heyes. It had been in existence at least 
two years before, for on the 22nd of July, 1598, it was entered 
in the Stationers’ Register by James Roberts under the name 
of ‘a booke of the Marchaunt of Venyce or otherwise called 
the Jewe of Venice’. And, in the same year, 1598, appeared 
the Palladis Tamia or Wit’s Treasury, by Francis Meres, who 
names the following comedies of Shakespeare: ‘his Gentle- 
men of Verona, his Errors, his Love labors lost, his Love 
labours wonne, his Midsummers night dreame, and his Mer- 
chant of Venice’. 

So far as ‘external evidence’ goes, therefore,! we can be 
certain that the play was not written later than the end of 
1597. 

All attempts to fix the date more precisely than this rest 
upon unsatisfactory evidence. For instance, much use has 
been made of the fact that in the account-book of Philip 
Henslowe, proprietor of the theatre where Shakespeare’s 
fellow-actors were playing between 1594 and 1596, we find 
under the date 25th August, 1594, a reference to the per- 
formance of a new play, the Venesyon Comodey. But there 
is no sort of proof that this is Shakespeare’s play. Again, 


1 For the different kinds of evidence obtainable in settling the date of one of 
Shakespeare’s plays, see the admirable summary in chapter iv. of Professor 
Dowden’s Shakspere Primer. 

( M 330) Cc 


XXXIV THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 


some have seen a close resemblance between Shylock’s 
argument in the trial scene as to the treatment of slaves and 
the argument of a Jew contained in Silvayn’s Ovator, which 
was published in 1596. But the differences are at least as 
striking as the resemblance. 

In manner, Zhe Merchant of Venice is near akin to Twelfth 
Night, As You Like It,and Much Ado About Nothing. With 
these plays of Shakespeare’s ‘middle’ period, it has much 
more in common than with the earlier comedies mentioned 
along with it by Francis Meres. This is particularly con- 
spicuous in the free employment of prose, even in scenes of 
serious interest, and in the easy and varied rhythm of the 
verse. We ought not perhaps to make much of the fact that 
it is the Zas¢ in Meres’ list. But on general grounds it seems 
safe to believe that The Merchant of Venice was written only 
a short time before the Palladis Tamia appeared, and that 
1597 is therefore its probable date. 


THE MERCHANT 


OF 


VENICE 


DRAMATIS PERSON: 


The DuKE oF VENICE. 

The Prince oF Morocco, 
The PrincE oF ARRAGON, 
ANTONIO, a merchant of Venice. 


} suitors to Portia. 


BassAanio, his friend, suitor likewise to Portia. 
SALANIO, 

SALARINO, }frierids to Antonio and Bassanio. 
GRATIANO, 

LorENZzO, in love with Jessica. 

SHYLOCK, a rich Jew. 

TUBAL, a Jew, his friend. \ 
LAuUNCELOT GosBo, the clown, servant to Shylock. 
Ox.p Gosso, father to Launcelot. 

LEONARDO, servant to Bassanio. 

BALTHASAR, 


} servants to Portia. 
STEPHANO, 


PortIA, a rich heiress. 
NenrissA, her waiting-maid. 
Jessica, daughter to Shylock. 


Magnificoes of Venice, Officers of the Court of Justice, Gaoler, 
Servants to Portia, and other Attendants. 


ScENE: Partly at Venice, and partly at Belmont, the seat of Portia, 
on the Continent. 


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THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 





ACEI: 
ScENE I. Venice. A street. 


Enter ANTONIO, SALARINO, a7d@ SALANIO. +, & 
spper [oe 7. f. jeene Ae | 
Ant. In sooth, I know not why I am/so sad: fd LAE olf, 
It wearies me; you say it wearles you; re ll 
But how I caught it, found it, or came by it, 
What stuff ’t is made of, whereof it is born, 
I am to learn; 
And such a want-wit sadness makes of me, 
That I have much ado to know myself. 
Salar. Your mind is tossing on the ocean ; 
There, where your argosies with portly sail, 
Like signiors and rich burghers on the flood, 10 
Or, as it were, the pageants of the sea, 
Do overpeer the petty traffickers, 
That curtsy to them, do them reverence, 
As they fly by them with their woven wings. 
Salan. Believe me, sir, had I such venture forth, 
The better part of my affections would 
Be with my hopes abroad. I should be still 
Plucking the grass, to know where sits the wind, 
Peering in maps for ports and piers and roads ; 
And every object that might make me fear 20 
Misfortune to my ventures, out of doubt 
Would make me sad. 
Salar. My wind cooling my broth 
Would blow me to an ague, when I thought 
What harm a wind too great at sea might do. 
I should not see the sandy hour-glass run, 
But I should think of shallows and of flats, 
And see my wealthy Andrew dock’d in sand, 
Vailing her high-top lower than her ribs 


2 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act I. 


To kiss her burial. Should I go to church 
And see the holy edifice of stone, 30 
And not bethink me straight of dangerous rocks, 
Which touching but my genile vessel’s side, 
Would scatter all her spices on the stream, 
Enrobe the roaring waters with my silks, 
And, in a word, but even now worth this, 
And now worth nothing? Shall I have the thought 
To think on this, and shall I lack the thought 
That such a thing bechanced would make me sad? 
But tell not me; I know, Antonio 
Is sad to think upon his merchandise. 40 
Ant. Believe me, no: I thank my fortune for it, 
My ventures are not in one bottom trusted, 
Nor to one place; nor is my whole estate 
Upon the fortune of this present year: 
Therefore my merchandise makes me not sad. 
Salar. Why, then you are in love. 
Ant. Fie, fie! 
Salar. Not in love neither? Then let us say you are sad, 
Because you are not merry: and ’t were as easy 
For you to laugh and leap and say you are merry, 
Because you are not sad. Now, by two-headed Janus, 50 
Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time: 
Some that will evermore peep through their eyes 
And laugh like parrots at a bag-piper, 
And other of such vinegar aspect 
That they ’ll not show their teeth in way of smile, 
Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable. 


Enter BASSANIO, LORENZO, and GRATIANO. 


Salan. Here comes Bassanio, your most noble kinsman, 
Gratiano and Lorenzo. Fare ye well: 
We leave you now with better company. 

Salar. 1 would have stay’d till 1 had made you merry, 60 
If worthier friends had not prevented me. 

Ant. Your worth is very dear in my regard. 
I take it, your own business calls on you 
And you embrace the occasion to depart. 

Salar. Good morrow, my good lords. 

Bass. Good signiors both, when shall we laugh? say, when? 
You grow exceeding strange: must it be so? 

Salar. We’ll make our leisures to attend on yours. 

[Zxeunt Salarino and Salanio. 
Lor. My Lord Bassanio, since you have found Antonio. 


Scene 1.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 


We two will leave you: but at dinner-time, 
I pray you, have in mind where we must meet. 
Bass. 1 will not fail you. 
Gra. You look not well, Signior Antonio ; 
You have too much respect upon the world: 
They lose it that do buy it with much care: 
Believe me, you are marvellously changed. 
Ant. 1 hold the world but as the world, Gratiano ; 
A stage where every man must play a part, 
And mine a sad one. 
Gra. Let me play the fool: 
With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come, 
And let my liver rather heat with wine 
Than my heart cool with mortifying groans. 
Why should a man, whose blood is warm within, 
Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster? 
Sleep when he wakes and creep into the jaundice 
By being peevish? I tell thee what, Antonio— 
I love thee, and it is my love that speaks— 
There are a sort of men whose visages 
Do cream and mantle like a standing pond, 
And do a wilful stillness entertain, 
With purpose to be dress’d in an opinion 
Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit, 
As who should say ‘I am Sir Oracle, 
And when I ope my lips let no dog bark!’ 
O my Antonio, I do know of these 
That therefore only are reputed wise 
For saying nothing, when, I am very sure, 
If they should speak, would almost damn those ears 


Which, hearing them, would call their brothers fools. 


I'll tell thee more of this another time: 

But fish not, with this melancholy bait, 

For this fool gudgeon, this opinion. 

Come, good Lorenzo. Fare ye well awhile: 
Ill end my exhortation after dinner. 


Lor. Well, we will leave you then till dinner-time: 


I must be one of these same dumb wise men, 
For Gratiano never lets me speak. 
Gra. Well, keep me company but two years moe, 
Thou shalt not know the sound of thine own tongue. 
Ant, Farewell: I’ll grow a talker for this gear. 


Gra. Thanks, 7’ faith, for silence is only commendable 


70 


80 


go 


100 


I10 


In a neat’s tongue dried. [Exeunt Gratiano and Lorenzo. 


Ant. Is that any thing now? 


4 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act I. 


Bass. Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more 
than any man in all Venice. His reasons are as two grains 
of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day 
ere you find them, and when you have them, they are not 


worth the search. 

Ant. Well, tell me now what lady is the same 
To whom you swore a secret pilgrimage, 
That you to-day promised to tell me of? 

Bass. ’T is not unknown to you, Antonio, 
How much I have disabled mine estate, 
By something showing a more swelling port 
Than my faint means would grant continuance: 
Nor do I now make moan to be abridged 
From such a noble rate; but my chief care 
Is to come fairly off from the great debts 
Whercin my time something too prodigal 
Hath left me gaged. To you, Antonio, 
I owe the most, in money and in love, 
And from your love I have a warranty 
To unburden all my plots and purposes 
How to get clear of all the debts I owe. 

Ant. I pray you, good Bassanio, let me know it; 
And if it stand, as you yourself still do, 
Within the eye of honour, be assured, 
My purse, my person, my extremest means, 
Lie all unlock’d to your occasions. 

Bass. In my school-days, when I had lost one shaft, 
I shot his fellow of the self-same flight 
The self-same way with more advised watch, 
To find the other forth, and by adventuring both 
I oft found both: I urge this childhood proof, 
Because what follows is pure innocence. 
I owe you much, and, like a wilful youth, 
That which I owe is lost; but if you please 
To shoot another arrow that self way 
Which you did shoot the first, I do not doubt, 
As I will watch the aim, or to find both 
Or bring your latter hazard back again 
And thankfully rest debtor for the first. 

Ant. You know me well, and herein spend but time 
To wind about my love with circumstance ; 
And out of doubt you do me now more wrong 
In making question of my uttermost 
Than if you had made waste of all I have: 
Then do but say to me what I should do 


120 


130 | 


140 


150 


Scene 2.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 5 


That in your knowledge may by me be done, 

And I am prest unto it: therefore, speak. 160 
Bass. In Belmont is a lady richly left ; 

And she is fair and, fairer than that‘word, 

Of wondrous virtues: sometimes from her eyes 

I did receive fair speechless messages : 

Her name is Portia, nothing undervalued 

To Cato’s daughter, Brutus’ Portia: 

Nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth, 

For the four winds blow in from every coast 

Renowned suitors, and her sunny locks 

Hang on her temples like a golden fleece ; 170 

Which makes her seat of Belmont Colchos’ strand, 

And many Jasons come in quest of her. 

O my Antonio, had I but the means 

To hold a rival place with one of them, 

I have a mind presages me such thrift, 

That I should questionless be fortunate ! 
Ant. Thou know’st that all my fortunes are at sea; 

Neither have I money nor commodity 

To raise a present sum: therefore go forth ; 

Try what my credit can in Venice do: 180 

That shall be rack’d, even to the uttermost, 

To furnish thee to Belmont, to fair Portia. 

Go, presently inquire, and so will I, 

Where money is, and I no question make 

To have it of my trust or for my sake. [Exeunt. 


SCENE II. Belmont. A room in PORTIA’S house. 


Enter PORTIA and NERISSA. 


Por. By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is aweary of this 
great world. 

er. You would be, sweet madam, if your miseries were 
in the same abundance as your good fortunes are: and yet, 
for aught I see, they are as sick that surfeit with too much 
as they that starve with nothing. It is no mean happiness 
therefore, to be seated in the mean: superfluity comes sooner 
by white hairs, but competency lives longer. 

Por. Good sentences and well pronounced. 

Wer. They would be better, if well followed, 10 

Por. If to do were as easy as to know what were good to 
do, chapels had been churches and poor men’s cottages 
princes’ palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own 


6 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act I. 


instructions: I can easier teach twenty what were good to 
be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own 
teaching. The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a 
hot temper leaps o’er a cold decree: such a hare is madness 
the youth, to skip o’er the meshes of good counsel the cripple. 
But this reasoning is not in the fashion to choose me a 
husband. O me, the word ‘choose’! I may neither choose 
whom I would nor refuse whom I dislike; so is the will of 
a living daughter curbed by the will of a dead father. Is it 
not hard, Nerissa, that I cannot choose one nor refuse 
none? 24 

Ner. Your father was ever virtuous; and holy men at 
their death have good inspirations: therefore the lottery, 
that he hath devised in these three chests of gold, silver and 
lead, whereof who chooses his meaning chooses you, will, no 
doubt, never be chosen by any rightly but one who shall 
rightly love. But what warmth is there in your affection 
towards any of these princely suitors that are already. come? 

Por. I pray thee, over-name them; and as thou namest 
them, I will describe them; and, according to my description, 
level at my affection. 34 

ver. First, there is the Neapolitan prince. 

Por. Ay, that’s a colt indeed, for he doth nothing but 
talk of his horse; and he makes it a great appropriation to 
his own good parts, that he can shoe him himself. 

er. Then there is the County Palatine. 

Por. He doth nothing but frown, as who should say ‘If 
you will not have me, choose’: he hears merry tales and 
smiles not: I fear he will prove the weeping philosopher 
when he grows old, being so full of unmannerly sadness in 
his youth. I had rather be married to a death’s-head with a 
bone in his mouth than to either of these. God defend me 
.from these two! 46 

Ver. How say you by the French lord, Monsieur Le Bon? 

Por. God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man. 
In truth, I know it is a sin to be a mocker: but, he! why, he 
hath a horse better than the Neapolitan’s, a better bad habit 
of frowning than the Count Palatine; he is every man in no 
man; if a throstle sing, he falls straight a capering: he will 
fence with his own shadow: if I should marry him, I should 
marry twenty husbands. If he would despise me, I would 
forgive him, for if he love me to madness, I shall never 
requite him. 

‘Ver. What say you, then, to Falconbridge, the young 
baron of England? 


Scene 2.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 7 


Por. You know I say nothing to him, for he understands 
not me, nor I him: he hath neither Latin, French, nor 
Italian, and you will come into the court and swear that 
I have a poor pennyworth in the English. He is a proper 
man’s picture, but, alas, who can converse with a dumb-show? 
How oddly he is suited! I think he bought his doublet in 
Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany and 
his behaviour every where. 

Ner. What think you of the Scottish lord, his neighbour? 

Por. That he hath a neighbourly charity in him, for he 
borrowed a box of the ear of the Englishman and swore he 
would pay him again when he was able: I think the French- 
man became his surety and sealed under for another. 

Ver. How like you the young German, the Duke of 
Saxony’s nephew? 73, 

Por. Very vilely in the morning, when he is sober, and 
most vilely in the afternoon, when he is drunk: when he is 
best, he is a little worse than a man, and when he is worst, 
he is little better than a beast: an the worst fall that ever 
fell, I hope I shall make shift to go without him. 

Ver. If he should offer to choose, and choose the right 
casket, you should refuse to perform your father’s will, if you 
should refuse to accept him. 81 

Por. Therefore, for fear of the worst, I pray thee, set a 
deep glass of rhenish wine on the contrary casket, for if the 
devil be within and that temptation without, I know he will 
choose it. I will do any thing, Nerissa, ere I’ll be married 
to a sponge. 

Wer. You need not fear, lady, the having any of these 
lords: they have acquainted me with their determinations ; 
which is, indeed, to return to their home and to trouble you 
with no more suit, unless you may be won by some other 
sort than your father’s imposition depending on the caskets. 

Por. lf I live to be as old as Sibylla, I will die as chaste 
as Djana, unless I be obtained by the manner of my father’s 
will. ’ 1 am glad this parcel of wooers are so reasonable, for 
there is not one among them but I dote on his very absence, 
and I pray God grant them a fair departure. 6 

Ver. Do you not remember, lady, in your father’s time, a 
Venetian, a scholar and a soldier, that came hither in company 
of the Marquis of Montferrat? 

Por. Yes, yes, it was Bassanio; as I think, he was so 
called. 

Ner. True, madam: he, of all the men that ever my foolish 
eyes looked upon, was the best deserving a fair lady. 


8 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act I. 


Por. | remember him well, and I remember him worthy 
of thy praise. 105 


Enter a Serving-man. 


How now! what news? 

Serv. The four strangers seek for you, madam, to take 
their leave: and there is a forerunner come from a fifth, the 
Prince of Morocco, who brings word the prince his master 
will be here to-night. Vi /10 

Por. If I could bid the fifth welcome with so good a heart 
as I can bid the other four farewell, I should be glad of his 
approach: if he have the condition of a saint and the com- 
plexion of a devil, I had rather he should shrive me than wive 
me. 

Come, Nerissa. Sirrah, go before. 
Whiles we shut the gates upon one wooer, another knocks at 


the door. [Exeunt. 
~t » tm 
“SCENE III. Venice. A public place. 5° : 
e clpbshiuner 


Enter BASSANIO and SHYLOCK. 


Shy. Three thousand ducats; well. 

Bass. Ay, sir, for three months. 

Shy. For three months; well. 

Bass. For the which, as I told you, Antonio shall be bound. 

Shy. Antonio shall become bound; well. 

Bass. May you stead me? will you pleasure me? shall I 
know your answer? 

Shy. Three thousand ducats for three months and Antonio 
bound. 

Bass. Your answer to that. 10 

Sy. Antonio is a good man. 

ass. Have you heard any imputation to the contrary? 

Shy. Oh, no, no, no, no: my meaning in saying hévis a 
good man is to have you understand me that he is sufficient. 
Yet his means are in supposition: he hath an argosy bound 
to Tripolis, another to the Indies; I understand, moreover, 
upon the Rialto, he hath a third at Mexico, a fourth for 
England, and other ventures he hath, squandered abroad. 
But ships are but boards, sailors but men: there be land-rats 
and water-rats, water-thieves and land-thieves, I mean 
pirates, and then there is the peril of waters, winds and 
rocks. The man is, notwithstanding, sufficient. Three 
thousand ducats; I think I may take his bond... 


23 
Begun, a eg? | 
Y he 7 
: t 


Scene 3.] THE MERCHANT OF. VENICE 


Bass. Be assured you may. 


Shy. 1 will be assured I may; and, that I may be assured, 


I will bethink me. May I speak with Antonio? 
Bass. If it please you to dine with us. 


Shy. Yes, to smell pork; to eat of the habitation which 
your prophet the Nazarite conjured the devil into. I will buy 
with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so 
following, but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor 
pray with you. What news on the Rialto? Who is he comes 


here? 
Enter ANTONIO. 


Bass. This is Signior Antonio. 

Shy. [Aside| How like a fawning publican he looks! 
I hate him for he is a Christian, 

But more for that in low simplicity 
He lends out money gratis and brings down 
The rate of usance here with us in Venice. 
If I can catch him once upon the hip, 
I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him. 
He hates our sacred nation, and he rails, 
Even there where merchants most do congregate, 
On me, my bargains and my well-won thrift, 
Which he calls interest. Cursed by my tribe, 
If I forgive him! 
Bass. Shylock, do you hear? 
Shy. 1 am debating of my present store, 
And, by the near guess of my memory, 
I cannot instantly raise up the gross 
Of full three thousand ducats, What of that? 
Tubal, a wealthy Hebrew of my tribe, 
Will furnish me. But soft! how many months 
Do you desire? [Zo Azz.] Rest you fair, good signior ; 
Your worship was the last man in our mouths. 

Ant. Shylock, although I neither lend nor borrow 
By taking nor by giving of excess, 

Yet, to supply the ripe wants of my friend, 
I’ll break a custom. Is he yet possess’d 
How much ye would? 

Shy. Ay, ay, three thousand ducats. 

Ant. And for three months. 

Shy. I had forgot; three months; you told me so. 
Well then, your bond; and let me see; but hear you; 
Methought you said you neither lend nor borrow 
Upon advantage. 


33 


40 


50 


60 


10 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act I. 


Ant. I do never use it. 
Shy. When Jacob grazed his uncle Laban’s sheep— 
This Jacob from our holy Abram was, 
As his wise mother wrought in his behalf, 
The third possessor; ay, he was the third— 
Ant. And what of him? did he take interest? 
Shy. No, not take interest, not, as you would say, 
Directly interest: mark what Jacob did. 
When Laban and himself were compromised ’ 
That all the eanlings which were streaked and pied 
Should fall as Jacob’s hire, 
The skilful shepherd pilled me certain wands 
And stuck them up before the fulsome ewes, 
Who, then conceiving, did in eaning time 
Fall party-coloured lambs, and those were Jacob’s. 
This was a way to thrive, and he was blest; 
And thrift is blessing, if men steal it not. 
Ant. This was a venture, sir, that Jacob served for; 
A thing not in his power to bring to pass, 
But sway’d and fashion’d by the hand of heaven. 
Was this inserted to make interest good? 
Or is your gold and silver ewes and rams? 
Shy. I cannot tell; I make it breed as fast: 
But note me, signior. 
Ant. Mark you this, Bassanio, 
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. 
An evil soul producing holy witness 
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek, 
A goodly apple rotten at the heart: 
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath! 
Shy. Three thousand ducats; ’t is a good round sum. 
Three months from twelve; then, let me see; the rate— 
Ant. Well, Shylock, shall we be beholding to you? 
Shy. Signior Antonio, many a time and oft 
In the Rialto you have rated me 
About my money and my usances: 
till have I borne it with a patient shrug, 
For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe, 
You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog, 
And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine, 
And all for use of that which is mine own. 
Well then, it now appears you need my help: 
Go to, then; you come to me, and you say 
‘Shylock, we would have moneys’: you say so; 
You, that did void your rheum upon my beard 


70 


80 


100 


Scene 3.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE II 


And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur 

Over your threshold: moneys is your suit. 

What should I say to you? Should I not say 110 
_ * Hath a dog money? is it possible 

A cur can lénd three thousand ducats?? Or 

Shall I bend low and in a bondman’s key, 

With bated breath and whispering humbleness, 

Say this; 

‘Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last; 

You spurn’d me such a day; another time 

You call’d me dog; and for these courtesies 

I’ll lend you thus much moneys’? 

Ant. 1 am as like to call thee so again, 120 

_To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too. 


not 
As to thy friends; for when did friendship take 
A breed for barren metal of his f 


But Tend it rather to, thine enemy 
Who, if he break, thou ma with better-face 
xa , 
7 AY. Why, look you, how you storm! 


I would be friends with you and have your love, 
Forget the shames that you have stain’d me with, 
Supply your present wants and take no doit 130 
Of usance for my moneys, and you’ll not hear me: 
This is kind I offer. 
Bass. This were kindness. 
Shy. This kindness will I show. 
Go with me to a notary, seal me there 
Your single bond; and, in a merry sport, 
If you repay me not on such a day, 
In such a place, such sum or sums as are 
Express’d in the condition, let the forfeit 
Be nominated for an equal pound 
Of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken 
In what part of your body pleaseth me. 140 
Ant. Content, 1’ faith: I’ll seal to such a bond 
And say there is much kindness in the Jew. 
Bass. You shall not seal to such a bond for me: 
I’ll rather dwell in my necessity. 
Ant. Why, fear not, man; I will not forfeit it: 
Within these two months, that’s a month before 
This bond expires, I do expect return 
Of thrice three times the value of this bond. 
Shy. O father Abram, what these Christians are, 









ALU tlhe enn 


Ceatrrt 4 ‘é A ereert — j Cr 


12 (‘THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act II. 


Whose own hard dealings teaches them suspect 150 
The thoughts of others! Pray you, tell me this; 
If he should break his day, what should I gain 
By the exaction of the forfeiture? 
A pound of man’s flesh taken from a man 
Is not so estimable, profitable neither, 
As flesh of muttons, beefs, or goats. I say, 
To buy his favour, I extend this friendship: 
If he will take it, so; if not, adieu; 
And, for my love, I pray you wrong me not. 
Ant. Yes, Shylock, I will seal unto this bond. 160 
Shy. Then meet me forthwith at the notary’s; 
Give him direction for this merry bond, 
And I will go and purse the ducats straight, 
See to my house, left in the fearful guard 
Of an unthrifty knave, and presently 
I will be with you. 
Ant. Hie thee, gentle Jew. [Exit Shylock. 
The Hebrew will turn Christian: he grows kind. 
Bass. 1 like not fair terms and a villain’s mind. 
Ant. Come on: in this there can be no dismay; 
My ships come home a month before the day. [Axeunt. 170 


AGT JUL. 
SCENE I. Belmont. A room in PORTIA’S house. 


Flourish of cornets. Enter the PRINCE OF MOROCCO and 
his train; PORTIA, NERISSA, and others attending. 


Mor. Mislike me not for my complexion, 
The shadow’d livery of the burnish’d sun, 
To whom I am a neighbour and near bred. 
Bring me the fairest creature northward born, 
Where Pheebus’ fire scarce thaws the icicles, 
And let us make incision for your love, 
To prove whose blood is reddest, his or mine. 
I tell thee, lady, this aspect of mine 
Hath feard the valiant: by my love, I swear 
The best-regarded virgins of our clime 10 
Have loved it too: I would not change this hue, 
Except to steal your thoughts, my gentle queen. 
Por. In terms of choice I am not solely led 





fol 
Scene 1.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 13 


By nice direction of a maiden’s eyes; 
Besides, the lottery of my destiny 
Bars me the right of voluntary choosing: 
But if my father had not scanted me 
And hedged me by his wit, to yield myself 
His wife who wins me by that means I told you, 
Yourself, renowned prince, then stood as fair 20 
As any comer I have look’d on yet 
For my affection. 
Mor. Even for that I thank you: 
Therefore, I pray you, lead me to the caskets 
To try my fortune. By this scimitar 
That slew the Sophy and a Persian prince 
That won three fields of Sultan Solyman, 
I would outstare the sternest eyes that look, 
Outbrave the heart most daring on the earth, 
Pluck the young sucking cubs from the she-bear, 
Yea, mock the lion when he roars for prey, 30 
To win thee, lady. But, alas the while! 
If Hercules and Lichas play at dice 
Which is the better man, the greater throw 
May turn by fortune from the weaker hand: 
So is Alcides beaten by his page; 
And so may I, blind fortune leading me, 
Miss that which one unworthier may attain, 
And die with grieving. 
Por. You must take your chance, 
And either not attempt to choose at all 
Or swear before you choose, if you choose wrong 40 
Never to speak to lady afterward 
In way of marriage: therefore be advised. 
Mor. Nor will not. Come, bring me unto my chance. 
Por. First, forward to the temple: after dinner 
Your hazard shall be made. 
Mor. Good fortune then! 
To make me blest or cursed’st among men. 
[Cornets, and exeunt. 


SCENE II. Venice. A Street. 


Enter LAUNCELOT. 


Laun. Certainly my conscience will serve me to run from 
this Jew my master. The fiend is at mine elbow and tempts 
me saying to me ‘Gobbo, Launcelot Gobbo, good Launcelot’, 

(330) D 


14 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act {I. 


or ‘good Gobbo’, or ‘good Launcelot Gobbo, use your legs, 
take the start, run away’. My conscience says ‘No; take 
heed, honest Launcelot; take heed, honest Gobbo’, or, as 
aforesaid, ‘honest Launcelot Gobbo; do not run; scorn run- 
ning with thy heels’. Well, the most courageous fiend bids 
me pack: ‘ Via!’ says the fiend; ‘away!’ says the fiend; ‘for 
the heavens, rouse up a brave mind’, says the fiend, ‘and 
run’. Well, my conscience, hanging about the neck of my 
heart, says very wisely to me ‘ My honest friend Launcelot, 
being an honest man’s son’, or rather an honest woman’s son; 
for, indeed, my father did something smack, something grow 
to, he had a kind of taste; well, my conscience says ‘ Launce- 
lot, budge not’. ‘Budge’, says the fiend. ‘ Budge not’, says 
my conscience. ‘Conscience’, say I, ‘you counsel well’; 
‘Fiend’, say I, ‘you counsel well’: to be ruled by my conscience, 
I should stay with the Jew my master, who, God bless the 
mark, is a kind of devil; and, to run away from the Jew, I 

should be ruled by the fiend, ‘who, saving your reverence, is 
the devil himself. Certainly the Jewi is the very devil incarnal ; 

and, in my conscience, my conscience is but a kind of hard 
conscience, to offer to counsel me to stay with the Jew. The 
fiend gives the more friendly counsel: I will run, fiend; my 
heels are at your command; I will run. 26 


Enter Old GOBBO, with a basket. 


Gob. Master young man, you, I pray you, which is the way 
to master Jew’s? 

Laun. [Aside] O heavens, this is my true-begotten father! 
who, being more than sand-blind, high-gravel blind, knows 
me not: I will try confusions with him. 

Gob. Master young gentleman, I pray you, which is the 
way to master Jew’s? 

Laun. Turn up on your right hand at the next turning, 
but, at the next turning of all, on your left; marry, at the very 
next turning, turn of no hand, but turn down indirectly to the 
Jew’s house. (37 

Gob. By God’s sonties, ’t will be a hard way to hit. Can 
you tell me whether one Launcelot, that dwells with him, 
dwell with him or no? 

Laun. Talk you of young Master Launcelot? [Aszde] Mark 
me now; now will I raise the waters. Talk you of young 
Master Launcelot? 

Gob. No master, sir, but a poor man’s son: his father, 
though I say it, is an honest exceeding poor man and, God 
be thanked, well to live. 46 


Scene 2.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 15° 


Laun. Well, let his father be what a’ will, we talk of young 
Master Launcelot. 

Gob. Your worship’s friend and Launcelot, sir. 

Laun. But I pray you, ergo, old man, ergo, I beseech you, 
talk you of young Master Launcelot? 

God. Of Launcelot, an’t please your mastership. 52 

Laun. Ergo, Master Launcelot. Talk not of Master 
Launcelot, father; for the young gentleman, according to 
Fates and Destinies and such odd sayings, the Sisters Three 
and such branches of learning, is indeed deceased, or, as you 
would say in plain terms, gone to heaven. 

Gob. Marry, God forbid! the boy was the very staff of my 
age, my very prop. 

Laun. Do L look like a cudgel or a hovel-post, a staff or a 
prop? Do you know me, father? 61 

Gob, Alack the day, I know you not, young gentleman: 
a # pray you, tell me, is my boy, God rest his soul, alive or 

ea 

Laun. Do you not know me, father? 

God. Alack, sir, I am sand-blind; I know ycu not. 

Laun. Nay, indeed, if you had your eyes, you might fail of 
the knowing me: it is a wise father that knows his own child. 
Well, old man, I will tell you news of your son: give me your 
blessing: truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid long; 
a man’s son may, but at the length truth will out. 71 

God. Pray you, sir, stand up: I am sure you are not 
Launcelot, my boy. 

Laun. Pray you, let’s have no more fooling about it, but 
give me your blessing: I am Launcelot, your boy that was, 
your son that is, your child that shall be. 

God. I cannot think you are my son. 

Laun. 1 know not what I shall think of that: but I am 
Launcelot, the Jew’s man, and I am sure Margery your wife 
is my mother. 80 

Gob. Her name is Margery, indeed: I’ll be sworn, if thou 
be Launcelot, thou‘art mine own flesh and blood. Lord 
worshipped might he be! what a beard hast thou got! thou 
hast got more hair on thy chin than Dobbin my fill-horse has 
on his tail. 

Laun. It should seem, then, that Dobbin’s tail grows back- 
ward: I am sure he had more hair of his tail than I have of 
my face when I last saw him. 

Gob. Lord, how art thou changed! How dost thou and 
thy master agree? I have brought him a present. How 
*gree you now? gI 


16 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act II. 


Laun. Well, well: but, for mine own part, as I have set up 
my rest to run away, so I will not rest till I have run some 
ground. My master’s a very Jew: give him a present! give 
him a halter: I am famished in his service; you may tell 
every finger I have with my ribs. Father, I am glad you 
are come: give me your present to one Master Bassanio, 
who, indeed, gives rare new liveries: if I serve not him, I 
will run as far as God has any ground. O rare fortune! here 
comes the man: to him, father; for I am a Jew, if I serve the 
Jew any longer. IOI 


Enter BASSANIO, with LEONARDO and other followers. 


Bass. You may do so; but let it be so hasted that supper 
be ready at the farthest by five of the clock. See these letters 
delivered; put the liveries to making, and desire Gratiano to 
come anon to my lodging. [Exit a Servant. 

Laun. To him, father. 

Gob. God bless your worship! 

Bass. Gramercy! wouldst thou aught with me? 

Gob. Here’s my son, sir, a poor boy,— 

Laun. Not a poor boy, sir, but the rich Jew’s man; that 
would, sir, as my father shall specify— lil 

Gob. He hath a great infection, sir, as one would say, to 
serve,— | 

Laun. Indeed, the short and the long is, I serve the Jew, 
and have a desire, as my father shall specify— 

Gob. His master and he, saving your worship’s reverence, 
are scarce cater-cousins— 

Laun. To be brief, the very truth is that the Jew, having 
done me wrong, doth cause me, as my father, being, I hope, 
an old man, shall frutify unto you— 120 

God. I have here a dish of doves that I would bestow upon 
your worship, and my suit is— 

Laun. In very brief, the suit is impertinent to myself, as 
your worship shall know by this honest old man; and, though 
I say it, though old man, yet poor man, my father. 

Bass. One speak for both. What would you? 

Laun. Serve you, sir. 

Gob. That is the very defect of the matter, sir. 

Bass. 1 know thee well; thou hast obtain’d thy suit: 
Shylock thy master spoke with me this day, 130 
And hath preferr’d thee, if it be preferment 
To leave a rich Jew’s service, to become 
The follower of so poor a gentleman. 

Laun. The old proverb is very well parted between my 


Scene 2.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 17 


master Shylock and you, sir: you have the grace of God, sir, 
and he hath enough. 
Bass. Thou speak’st it well. Go, father, with thy son. 
Take leave of thy old master and inquire 
My lodging out. Give him a livery 
More guarded than his fellows’: see it done. 140 
Laun. Father, in. I cannot get a service, no; I have ne’er 
a tongue in my head. Well, if any man in Italy have a fairer 
table which doth offer to swear upon a book, I shall have 
good fortune. Go to, here’s a simple line of life: here’s a 
small trifle of wives: alas, fifteen wives is nothing! eleven 
widows and nine maids is a simple coming-in for one man: 
and then to ’scape drowning thrice, and to be in peril of my 
life with the edge of a feather-bed; here are simple scapes. 
Well, if Fortune be a woman, she’s a good wench for this 
gear. Father, come; I’ll take my leave of the Jew in the 
twinkling of an eye. [Exeunt Launcelot and Old Gobbo. 
Bass. 1 pray thee, good Leonardo, think on this: 152 
These things being bought and orderly bestow’d, 
Return in haste, for I do feast to-night 
My best-esteem’d acquaintance: hie thee, go. 
Leon. My best endeavours shall be done herein. 


Enter GRATIANO. 


Gra. Where is your master? 

Leon. Yonder, sir, he walks. [E-xz¢. 

Gra. Signior Bassanio! 

Bass. Gratiano! 

Gra. 1 have a suit to you. 

Bass. You have obtain’d it. 160 

Gra. You must not deny me: I must go with you to 
Belmont. 

Bass. Why, then you must. But hear thee, Gratiano; 
Thou art too wild, too e and atte nd f voice ; tp payer 
Parts that become Se, Sy aNet vi ‘Ahe 
And in such eyes as ours appear steal ai : Vv AW 
But where thou art not known, why, there they show 
Something too liberal. Pray thee, take pain 
To allay with some cold drops of modesty 
Thy skipping spirit, lest through thy wild behaviour 170 
I be misconstrued in the place I go to 
And lose my hopes. 

Gra. Signior Bassanio, hear me: 

If I do not put on a sober habit, 
Talk with respect and swear but now and then, 


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“» I am not to his manners, 


18 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 


[Act II. 
Wear prayer-books in my pocket, look demurely, 
Nay more, while grace is saying, hood mine eyes 
Thus with my hat, and sigh and say ‘amen’, 
Use all the observance of civility, 
Like one well studied in a sad ostent 
To please his grandam, never trust me more. 

Bass. Well, we shall see your bearing. 

Gra. Nay, but I bar to-night: you shall not gauge me 
By what we do to-night. 

Bass. No, that were pity: 
I would entreat you rather to put on 
Your boldest suit of mirth, for we have friends 
That purpose merriment. But fare you well: 
I have some business. 

Gra. And I must to Lorenzo and the rest: 
But we will visit you at supper-time. 


180 


[Exeunt. 


Py. 
NScEnE Ill. Zhe same. A room in SHYLOCK’S house. 


Enter JESSICA and LAUNCELOT. 


Jes. 1 am sorry thou wilt leave my father so: 


WS are house is hell, and thou, a merry devil, 


Didst rob it of some taste of tediousness. 
But fare thee well, there is a ducat for thee: 
And, Launcelot, soon at supper shalt thou see 
Lorenzo, who is thy new master’s guest: 
Give him this letter; do it secretly; 
And so farewell: I would not have my father 
See me in talk with thee. 9 
Laun. Adieu! tears exhibit my tongue. Most beautiful 
pagan, most sweet Jew! But, adieu: these foolish drops do 
something drown my manly spirit: adieu. 
Jes. Farewell, good Launcelot. [Exit Launcelot. 
Alack, what heinous sin is it in me 


» To be ashamed to be my father’s child! 


But though I am a daughter to his blood, 
O Lorenzo, 
If thou keep promise, I shall end this strife, 


Become a Christian and thy loving wife. [Exit 


Scene 4.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 19 


SCENE IV. TZhesame. A street. 


Enter GRATIANO, LORENZO, SALARINO, amd SALANIO. 


Lor. Nay, we will slink away in supper-time, 
Disguise us at my lodging and return, 
All in an hour. 

Gra. We have not made good preparation. 

Salar. We have not spoke us yet of torch-bearers. 

Salan. ’T is vile, unless it may be quaintly order’d, 
And better in my mind not undertook. 

Lor. ’T is now but four o’clock: we have two hours 
To furnish us. 


Enter LAUNCELOT, with a letter. 


Friend Launcelot, what’s the news? 
Laun. An it shall please you to break up this, it shall seem 
to signify. II 
Lor. 1 know the hand: in faith, ’tis a fair hand ; 
And whiter than the paper it writ on 
Is the fair hand that writ. 
Gra. Love-news, in faith. 
Laun. By your leave, sir. 
Lor. Whither goest thou? 
Laun. Marry, sir, to bid my old master the Jew to sup 
to-night with my new master the Christian. 
Lor. Hold here, take this: tell gentle Jessica 
I will not fail her; speak it privately. 20 
Go.— Gentlemen, [Exit Launcelot. 
Will you prepare you for this masque to-night? 
I am provided of a torch-bearer. 
Salar. Ay, marry, I'll be gone about it straight. 
Salan. And so will I. 
Lor. Meet me and Gratiano 
At Gratiano’s lodging some hour hence. 
Salar. ’T is good we do so. [Exeunt Salar. and Salan. 
Gra. Was not that letter from fair Jessica? 
Lor. I must needs tell thee all. She hath directed 
How I shall take her from her father’s house, 30 
What gold and jewels she is furnish’d with, 
What page’s suit she hath in readiness. 
If e’er the Jew her father come to heaven, 
It will be for his gentle daughter’s sake: 
And never dare misfortune cross her foot, 
Unless she do it under this excuse, 


20 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act II. 


That she is issue to a faithless Jew. 
Come, go with me; peruse this as thou goest: 
Fair Jessica shall be my torch-bearer. [Exeunt. 


SCENE V. TZhesame. Before SHYLOCK’S house. 


Enter SHYLOCK and LAUNCELOT. 


Shy. Well, thou shalt see, thy eyes shall be thy judge, 
The difference of old Shylock and Bassanio:— 
What, Jessica!—thou shalt not gormandise, 
As thou hast done with me :—What, Jessica !— 
And sleep and snore, and rend apparel out ;— 
Why, Jessica, I say! 

Laun. Why, Jessica! 

Shy. Who bids thee call? I do not bid thee call. 

Laun. Your worship was wont to tell me that I could do 
nothing without bidding. 


Etnter JESSICA. 


Jes. Call you? what is your will? 10 
Shy. I am bid forth to supper, Jessica: 

There are my keys. But wherefore should I go? 

I am not bid for love; they flatter me: 

But yet I’ll go in hate, to feed upon 

The prodigal Christian. Jessica, my girl, 

Look to my house. I am right loath to go: 

There is some ill a-brewing towards-my rest, 

For I did dream of money-bags to-night. 

Laun. I beseech you, sir, go: my young master doth 
expect your reproach. 20 

Shy. So do I his. 

Laun. And they have conspired together, I will not say 
you shall see a masque; but if you do, then it was not for 
nothing that my nose fell a-bleeding on Black-Monday last 
at six o’clock 7? the morning, falling out that year on Ash- 
Wednesday was four year, in the afternoon. 

Shy. What, are there masques? Hear you me, Jessica: 
Lock up my doors; and when you hear the drum 
And the vile squealing of the wry-neck’d fife, 

Clamber not you up to the casements then, 30 
Nor thrust your head into the public street 

To gaze on Christian fools with varnish’d faces, 

But stop my house’s ears, I mean my casements: 

Let not the sound of shallow foppery enter 


Scene 6.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 2t 


My sober house. By Jacob’s staff, I swear, 
I have no mind of feasting forth to-night: 
But I will go. Go you before me, sirrah ; 
Say I will come. 

Laun. 1 will go before, sir. Mistress, look out at window, 
for all this; 40 
There will come a Christian by, 

Will be worth a Jewess’ eye. [Extt. 


Shy. What says that fool of Hagar’s offspring, ha? 
Jes. His words were ‘ Farewell mistress’ ; nothing else. 
Shy. The patch is kind enough, but a huge feeder ; 
Snail-slow in profit, and he sleeps by day 
More than the wild-cat: drones hive not with me; 
Therefore I part with him, and part with him 
To one that I would have him help to waste 
His borrow’d purse. Well, Jessica, goin: . 50 
Perhaps I will return immediately: 
Do as I bid you; shut doors after you: 
Fast bind, fast find ; 


A proverb never stale in thrifty mind. [Exczt. 
Jes. Farewell; and if my fortune be not crost, 
I have a father, you a daughter, lost. [Exit 


SCENE VI. The same. 


Enter GRATIANO and SALARINO, masqgued. 


Gra. This is the pent-house under which Lorenzo 
Desired us to make stand. 
Salar. His hour is almost past. 
Gra. And it is marvel he out-dwells his hour, 
For lovers ever run before the clock. 
Salar. O, ten times faster Venus’ pigeons fly 
To seal love’s bonds new-made, than they are wont 
To keep obliged faith unforfeited ! 
Gra. That ever holds: who riseth from a feast 
With that keen appetite that he sits down? 
Where is the horse that doth untread again 10 
His tedious measures with the unbated fire 
That he did pace them first? All things that are, 
Are with more spirit chased than enjoy’d. 
How like a younker or a prodigal 
The scarfed bark puts from her native bay, 
Hugg’d and embraced by the wanton wind! 
How like the prodigal doth she return, 


22 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act II, 


With over-weather’d ribs and ragged sails, 
Lean, rent and beggar’d by the wanton wind! 
Salar. Here comes Lorenzo: more of this hereafter. 20 


Enter LORENZO. 


Lor. Sweet friends, your patience for my long abode; 
Not I, but my affairs, have made you wait: 
When you shall please to play the thieves for wives, 
Ill watch as long for you then. Approach; 
Here dwells my father Jew. Ho! who’s within? 


Enter JESSICA, above, in boy's clothes. 


Jes. Who are you? Tell me, for more certainty, 
Albeit I’ll swear that I do know your tongue. 
Lor. Lorenzo, and thy love. 
Jes. Lorenzo, certain, and my love indeed, 
For who love I so much? And now who knows 30 
But you, Lorenzo, whether I am yours? 
Lor. Heaven and thy thoughts are witness that thou art. 
Jes. Here, catch this casket; it is worth the pains. 
I am glad ’tis night, you do not look on me, 
For I am much ashamed of my exchange: 
But love is blind and lovers cannot see 
The pretty follies that themselves commit ; 
For if they could, Cupid himself would blush 
To see me thus transformed to a boy. 
Lor. Descend, for you must be my torch-bearer. 40 
Jes. What, must I hold a candle to my shames? 
They in themselves, good sooth, are too too light. 
Why, ’t is an office of discovery, love; 
And I should be obscured. 
Lor. So are you, sweet, 
Even in the lovely garnish of a boy. 
But come at once; 
For the close night doth play the runaway, 
And we are stay’d for at Bassanio’s feast. 
Jes. 1 will make fast the doors, and gild myself 
With some more ducats, and be with you straight. 
[Exit above 50 
Gra. Now, by my hood, a Gentile and no Jew. 
Lor. Beshrew me but I love her heartily ; 
For she is wise, if I can judge of her, 
And fair she is, if that mine eyes be true, 
And true she is, as she hath proved herself, 


Me THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 


And therefore, like herself, wise, fair and true, 
Shall she be placed in my constant soul. 


Enter JESSICA, below. 


What, art thou come? On, gentlemen; away! 
Our masquing mates by this time for us stay. 
[Exit with Jessica and Salarino 


Enter ANTONIO. 


Ant. Who’s there? 60 
Gra. Signior Antonio! 
Ant. Fie, fie, Gratiano! where are all the rest? 
’T is nine o’clock: our friends all stay for you. 
No masque to-night: the wind is come about; 
Bassanio presently will go aboard: 
I have sent twenty out to seek for you. 
Gra. I am glad on’t: I desire no more delight 
Than to be under sail and gone to-night. [Exeunt. 


SCENE VII. Belmont. A room in PORTIA’S house. 


Flourish of cornets. Enter PORTIA, with the PRINCE OF 
MOROCCO, and their trains. 


Por. Go, draw as de the curtains and discover 
The several caskets to this noble prince. 
Now make your choice. 

Mor. The first, of gold, who this inscription bears, 

o chooseth me shall gain what many men desire’ ; 
he second, silver, which this promise carries, 
o chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves’ ; 
is third, dull lead, with warning all as blunt, 

‘Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath’. 

ow shall I know if I do choose the right? 10 

Por. The one of them contains my picture, prince: 
If you choose that, then I am yours withal. 

Mor. Some god direct my judgement! Let me see; 
I will survey the inscriptions back again. 
What says this leaden casket? 
“Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath’. 
Must give: for what? for lead? hazard for lead? 
This casket threatens. Men that hazard all 
Do it in hope of fair advantages: 
A golden mind stoops not to shows of dross ; 20 


24 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE {Act II. 


I’ll then nor give nor hazard aught for lead. 

What says the silver with her virgin hue? 

‘Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves’, 
As much as he deserves! Pause there, Morocco, 
And weigh thy value with an even hand: 

If thou be’st rated by thy estimation, 

Thou dost deserve enough; and yet enough 

May not extend so far as to the lady: 

And yet to be afeard of my deserving 

Were but a weak disabling of myself. 

As much as I deserve! Why, that’s the lady: 

I do in birth deserve her, and in fortunes, 

In graces and in qualities of breeding ; 

But more than these, in love I do deserve. 

What if I stray’d no further, but chose here? 

Let’s see once more this saying graved in gold; 
‘Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire. 
Why, that’s the lady;.all the world desires her; 
From the four corners of the earth they come, 

To kiss this shrine, this mortal breathing saint: 
The Hyrcanian deserts and the vasty wilds 

Of wide Arabia are as throughfares now 

For princes to come view fair Portia: 

The watery kingdom, whose ambitious head 

Spits in the face of heaven, is no bar 

To stop the foreign spirits, but they come, 

As o’er a brook, to see fair Portia. 

One of these three contains her heavenly picture. 
Is’t like that lead contains her? ’T were damnation 
To think so base a thought: it were too gross 

To nib her cerecloth in the obscure grave. 

Or shall I think in silver she’s immured, 

Being ten times undervalued to tried gold? 

O sinful thought! Never so rich a gem 

Was set in worse than gold. They have in England 
A coin that bears the figure of an angel 

Stamped in gold, but that’s insculp’d upon ; 

But here an angel in a golden bed 

Lies all within. Deliver me the key: 

Here do I choose, and thrive I as I may! 


Por. There, take it, prince; and if my form lie there, 


30 


40 


60a 


Then I am yours. [He unlocks the golden casket. 


Mor. O hell! what have we here? 
A carrion Death, within whose empty eye 
There is a written scroll! I’ll read the writing. 


Scene 8.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 25 


[Reads] All that glisters is not gold; 
Often have you heard that told: 
Many a man his life hath sold 
But my outside to behold: 
Gilded tombs do worms infold. 
Had you been as wise as bold, 7O 
Young in limbs, in judgement old, 
Your answer had not been inscroll’d: 
Fare you well; your suit is cold. 


Cold, indeed; and labour lost: 
Then, farewell, heat, and welcome, frost ! 


Portia, adieu. I have too grieved a heart 
To take a tedious leave: thus losers part. 
[Exit with his train. Flourish of cornets. 
Por. A gentle riddance. Draw the curtains, go. 
Let all of his complexion choose me so. [Exeunt. 


SCENE VIII. Venice. A street. 


Enter SALARINO azd SALANIO. 


Salar. Why, man, I saw Bassanio under sail: 
With him is Gratiano gone along; 

And in their ship I am sure Lorenzo is not. 

Salan. The villain Jew with outcries raised the duke, 
Who went with him to search Bassanio’s ship. 

Salar. He came too late, the ship was under sail: 

But there the duke was given to understand 

That in a gondola were seen together 

Lorenzo and his amorous Jessica: 

Besides, Antonio certified the duke 10 
They were not with Bassanio in his ship. 

Salan. | never heard a passion so confused, | 
So strange, outrageous, and so variable, ke ) 
As the dog Jew did utter in the streets: (| / e7R/¥ 
‘My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter’ Me NT Na 
Fled with a Christian! O my Christian ducats! 4 y, Walt. 
Justice! the law! my ducats, and my daughter! iy fi 
A sealed bag, two sealed bags of ducats, i 
Of double ducats, stolen from me by my daughter! i \ sn 
And jewels, two stones, two rich and precious stones, 20 ~ \ 
Stolen by my daughter! Justice! find the girl; 

She hath the stones upon her, and the ducats.’ 

Salar. Why, all the boys in Venice follow him, 
Crying, his stones, his daughter, and his ducats. 






26 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act II. 


Salan. Let good Antonio look he keep his day, 
Or he shall pay for this. 
Salar. Marry, well remember ’d. 
I reason’d with a Frenchman yesterday, 
Who told me, in the narrow seas that part 
The French and English, there miscarried 
A vessel of our country richly fraught; 30 
I thought upon Antonio when he told me; 
And wish’d in silence that it were not his. 
Salan, You were best to tell Antonio what you hear; 
Yet do not suddenly, for it may grieve him. 
Salar. A kinder gentleman treads not the earth. 
I saw Bassanio and Antonio part: 
Bassanio told him he would make some speed 
Of his return: he answerd, ‘ Do not so; 
Slubber not business for my sake, Bassanio, 
But stay the very riping of the time; 40 
And for the Jew’s bond which he hath of me, 
Let it not enter in your mind of love: 
Be merry, and employ your chiefest thoughts 
To courtship and such fair ostents of love 
As shall conveniently become you there’: 
And even there, his eye being big with tears, 
Turning his face, he put his hand behind him, 
And with affection wondrous sensible 
He wrung Bassanio’s hand; and so they parted. 
Salan. I think he only loves the world for him. 50 
I pray thee, let us go and find him out 
And quicken his embraced heaviness 
With some delight or other. 
Salar. Do we so. [Exeunt. 


SCENE IX. Belmont. A room in PORTIA’S house. 


Enter NERISSA with a Servitor. 


Ner. Quick, quick, I pray thee; draw the curtain straight: 
The Prince of Arragon hath ta’en his oath, 
And comes to his election presently. 


Flourish of cornets. Enter the PRINCE OF ARRAGON, 
PORTIA, and their trains. 


Por. Behold, there stand the caskets, noble prince: 
If you choose that wherein I am contain’d, 
Straight shall our nuptial rites be solemnized: 


Scene g.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 


But if you fail, without more speech, my lord, 
You must be gone from hence immediately. 

Ar. I am enjoin’d by oath to observe three things: 
First, never to unfold to any one 
Which casket ’t was I chose; next,if I fail 
Of the right casket, never in my life 
To woo a maid in way of marriage: 

Lastly, 
If I do fail in fortune of my choice, 
Immediately to leave you and be gone. 

Por. To these injunctions every one doth swear 
That comes to hazard for my worthless self. 

Ar. And so have I address’d me. Fortune now 
To my heart’s hope! Gold; silver; and base lead. 
‘Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath. 
You shall look fairer, ere I give or hazard. 

What says the golden chest? ha! let me see: 


‘Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire’. 


What many men desire! that ‘many’ may be meant 
By the fool multitude, that choose by show, 

Not learning more than the fond eye doth teach; 
Which pries not to the interior, but, like the martlet, 
Builds in the weather on the outward wall, 

Even in the force and road of casualty. 

I will not choose what many men desire, 

Because I will not jump with common spirits 

And rank me with the barbarous multitudes. 

Why, then to thee, thou silver treasure-house ; 

Tell me once more what title thou dost bear: 

‘Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves’: 
And well said too; for who shall go about 

To cozen fortune and be honourable 

Without the stamp of merit? Let none presume 

_ To wear an undeserved dignity. 

O, that estates, degrees and offices 

Were not derived corruptly, and that clear honour 
Were purchased by the merit of the wearer! 

How many then should cover that stand bare! 

How many be commanded that command! 

How much low peasantry would then be glean’d 
From the true seed of honour! and how much honour 
Pick’d from the chaff and ruin of the times 

To be new-varnish’d! Well, but to my choice: 

‘Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves’. 
I will assume desert. Give me a key for this, 


27 


Io 


20 


30 


50 


28 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE ([ActII.Sc.o. 


And instantly unlock my fortunes here. 
[He opens the silver casket. 
Por. Too long a pause for that which you find there. 
Ar. What’s here? the portrait of a blinking idiot, 
Presenting me a schedule! I will read it. 
How much unlike art thou to Portia! 
How much unlike my hopes and my deservings! 
‘Who chooseth me shall have as much as he deserves.’ 
Did I deserve no more than a fool’s head? 
Is that my prize? are my deserts no better? 60 
Por. To offend, and judge, are distinct offices 
And of opposed natures. 
Ar. What is here? 


[Reads] The fire seven times tried this: 
Seven times tried that judgement is, 
That did never choose amiss. 
Some there be that shadows kiss; 
Such have but a shadow’s bliss: 
There be fools alive, I wis, 
Silverd o’er; and so was this. 
I will ever be your head: 70 
So be gone: you are sped. 


Still more fool I shall appear 
By the time I linger here: 
With one fool’s head I came to woo, 
But I go away with two. 
Sweet, adieu. I’ll keep my oath, 
Patiently to bear my wroth. 
[Exeunt Arragon and train. 
Por. Thus hath the candle singed the moth. 
O, these deliberate fools! when they do choose, 
They have the wisdom by their wit to lose. Se 
er. The ancient saying is no heresy, 
Hanging and wiving goes by destiny. 
Por. Come, draw the curtain, Nerissa. 


Enter a Servant. 


Serv. Where is my lady? 
Por, Here: what would my lord? 
Serv. Madam, there is alighted at your gate 

A young Venetian, one that comes before 

To signify the approaching of his lord; 

From whom he bringeth sensible regreets, 

To wit, besides commends and courteous breath, 


ActIII.Sc.1.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 29. 


Gifts of rich value. Yet I have not seen 90 
So likely an ambassador of love: 
A day in April never came so sweet, 
To show how costly summer was at hand, 
As this fore-spurrer comes befecre his lord. 
Por. No more, I pray thee: I am half afeard 
Thou wilt say anon he is some kin to thee, 
Thou spend’st such high-day wit in praising him. 
Come, come, Nerissa; for I long to see 
Quick Cupid’s post that comes so mannerly. 
er. Bassanio, lord Love, if thy will it be! [#xeunt. 100 


lod tag #4 


SCENE I. Venice. A street. 


Enter SALANIO amd SALARINO. 


Salan. Now, what news on the Rialto? 

Salar. Why, yet it lives there unchecked that Antonio hath 
a ship of rich lading wrecked on the narrow seas; the Good- 
wins, I think they call the place; a very dangerous flat and 
fatal, where the carcases of many a tall ship lie buried, as they 
say, if my gossip Report be an honest woman of her word. 

Salan. 1 would she were as lying a gossip in that as ever 
knapped ginger or made her neighbours believe she wept for 
the death of a third husband. But it is true, without any slips 
of prolixity or crossing the plain highway of talk, that the good 
Antonio, the honest Antonio, O that I had a title good 
enough to keep his name company !— 12 

Salar. Come, the full stop. 

Salan. Ha! what sayest thou? Why, the end is, he hath 
lost a ship. 

Salar. | would it might prove the end of his losses. 

Salan. Let me say ‘amen’ betimes, lest the devil cross my 
prayer, for here he comes in the likeness of a Jew. 





Enter SHYLOCK. 


How now, Shylock! what news among the merchants? 
Shy. You knew, none so well, none so well as you, of my 
daughter’s flight. Zk 
Salar. That’s certain: I, for my part, knew the tailor that 
made the wings she flew withal. 
(M330) E 


30 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act III. 


Salan. And Shylock, for his own part, knew the bird was 
fledged; and then it is the complexion of them all to leave 
the dam. 

Shy. She is damned for it. 

Salar. That’s certain, if the devil may be her judge. 

Shy. My own flesh and blood to rebel! 

Salan. Out upon it, old carrion! rebels it at these years? 

Shy. I say, my daughter is my flesh and blood. 31 

Salar. There is more difference between thy flesh and hers 
than between jet and ivory; more between your bloods than 
there is between red wine and rhenish. But tell us, do you 
hear whether Antonio have had any loss at sea or no? 

Shy. There I have another bad match: a bankrupt, a 
prodigal, who dare scarce show his head on the Rialto; a 
beggar, that was used to come so smug upon the mart; let 
him look to his bond: he was wont to call me usurer; let him 
look to his bond: he was wont to lend money for a Christian 
courtesy; let him look to his bond. 4I 

Salar. Why, I am sure, if he forfeit, thou wilt not take his 
flesh: what’s that good for? 

Shy. To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else, it will 
feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and hindered me 
half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, : 
scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, 
heated mine enemies; and what’s his reason? I ama Jew. 
Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimen- 
sions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, 
hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, 
healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same 
winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we 
not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, 
do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If 
we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If 
a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If 
a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by 
Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you teach 
me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the 
instruction. 61 


Enter a Servant. 


Serv. Gentlemen, my master Antonio is at his house and 
desires to speak with you both. 
Salar. We have been up and down to seek him. 


Scene 1.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 31 


Enter TUBAL. 


Salan. Here comes another of the tribe: a third cannot 
be matched, unless the devil himself turn Jew. 
[Lxeunt Salan., Salar., and Servant. 
Shy. How now, Tubal! what news from Genoa? hast thou 
found my daughter? 
‘ Tub. | often came where I did hear of her, but cannot find 
er. 70 
Shy. Why, there, there, there, there! a diamond gone, cost 
me two thousand ducats in Frankfort! The curse never fell 
upon our nation till now; I never felt it till now: two thousand 
ducats in that; and other precious, precious jewels. I would 
my daughter were dead at my foot, and the jewels in her ear! 
would she were hearsed at my foot, and the ducats in her 
coffin! No newsof them? Why, so: and I know not what’s 
spent in the search: why, thou loss upon loss! the thief gone 
with so much, and so much to find the thief; and no satis- 
faction, no revenge: nor no ill luck stirring but what lights on 
my shoulders; no sighs but of my breathing; no tears but of 
my shedding. 82 
Tub. Yes, other men have ill luck too: Antonio, as I heard 
in Genoa,— 
Shy. What, what, what? ill luck, ill luck? 
Tub. Hath an argosy cast away, coming from Tripolis. 
Shy. I thank God, I thank God. Is’t true, is’t true? 
Tub. 1 spoke with some of the sailors that escaped the 
wreck. 
Shy. I thank thee, good Tubal: good news, good news! ha, 
ha! where? in Genoa? gI 
Tub. Your daughter spent in Genoa, as I heard, in one 
night fourscore ducats. 
Shy. Thou stickest a dagger in me: I shall never see my 
gold again: fourscore ducats at a sitting! fourscore ducats! 
Tub. There came divers of Antonio’s creditors in my com- 
pany to Venice, that swear he cannot choose but break. 
Shy. 1am very glad of it: Ill plague him; Ill torture him: 
I am glad of it. 
Tub. One of them showed me a ring that he had of your 
daughter for a monkey. IOI 
Shy. Out upon her! Thou torturest me, Tubal: it was my 
turquoise; I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor: I would 
not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys. 
Tub. But Antonio is certainly undone. 
Shy. Nay, that’s true, that’s very true. Go, Tubal, fee me 


32 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act III. 


an officer; bespeak him a fortnight before. I will have the 
heart of him, if he forfeit; for, were he out of Venice, I can 
make what merchandise I will. Go, go, Tubal, and meet me 
at our synagogue; go, good Tubal; at our synagogue, Tubal. 

[Exeunt. 


SCENE II. Belmont. A room in PORTIA’S house. 


Enter BASSANIO, PORTIA, GRATIANO, NERISSA, avd 
Attendants. 


Por. I pray you, tarry: pause a day or two 
Before you hazard; for, in choosing wrong, 
I lose your company: therefore forbear awhile. 
There’s something tells me, but it is not love, 
I would not lose you; and you know yourself, 
Hate counsels not in such a quality. 
But lest you should not understand me well,— 
And yet a maiden hath no tongue but thought,— 
I would detain you here some month or two 
Before you venture for me. I could teach you 10 
How to choose right, but I am then forsworn ; 
So will I never be: so may you miss me; 
But if you do, you’ll make me wish a sin, 
That I had been forsworn. Beshrew your eyes, 
They have o’erlook’d me and divided me; 
One half of me is yours, the other half yours, 
Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours, 
And so all yours. O, these naughty times 
Put bars between the owners and their rights! 
And so, though yours, not yours. Prove it so, 20 
Let fortune go to hell for it, not I. 
I speak too long; but ’t is to peize the time, 
To eke it and to draw it out in length, 
To stay you from election. 
Bass. Let me choose; 
For as I am, I live upon the rack. 
Por. Upon the rack, Bassanio! then confess 
What treason there is mingled with your love. 
Bass. None but that ugly treason of mistrust, 
Which makes me fear the enjoying of my love: 
There may as well be amity and life 30 
’T ween snow and fire, as treason and my love. 
Por. Ay, but I fear you speak upon the rack, 
Where men enforced do speak anything. 


Scene 2.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 


Bass. Promise me life, and I’ll confess the truth. 
Por. Well then, confess and live. 
Bass. ‘Confess’ and ‘love’ 
Had been the very sum of my confession : 
O happy torment, when my torturer 
Doth teach me answers for deliverance ! 
But let me to my fortune and the caskets. 
Por. Away, then! I am lock’d in one of them: 
If you do love me, you will find me out. 
Nerissa and the rest, stand all aloof. 
Let music sound while he doth make his choice; 
Then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end, 
Fading in music: that the comparison 
May stand more proper, my eye shall be the stream 
And watery death-bed for him. He may win; 
And what is music then? Then music is 
Even as the flourish when true subjects bow 
To a new-crowned monarch: such it is 
As are those dulcet sounds in break of day 
That creep into the dreaming bridegroom’s ear 
And summon him to marriage. Now he goes, 
With no less presence, but with much more love, 
Than young Alcides, when he did redeem 
The virgin tribute paid by howling Troy 
To the sea-monster: I stand for sacrifice; 
The rest aloof are the Dardanian wives, 
With bleared visages, come forth to view 
The issue of the exploit. Go, Hercules! 
Live thou, I live: with much much more dismay 
I view the fight than thou that makest the fray. 


33 


40 


50 


Music, whilst BASSANIO comments on the caskets to himself. 


SONG. 


Tell me where is fancy bred, 
Or in the heart or in the head? 
How begot, how nourished? 
Reply, reply. 
It is engenderd in the eyes, 
With gazing fed; and fancy dies 
In the cradle where it lies. 
Let us all ring fancy’s knell: 
I’ll begin it,—Ding, dong, bell. 
All. Ding, dong, bell. 
Bass. So may the outward shows be least themselves: 


70 


34 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act III. 


The world is still deceived with ornament. 
Lin Jaw, what plea so tainted and corrupt 

But, being season’d with a gracious voice, 

Obscures the show of evil? pt 

What damned error, but some sober brow 

Will bless it and approve it with a text, 

Hiding the grossness with fair ornament? 80 

There is no vice so simple but assumes ~ 

Some mark of virtue on his outward parts: 

How many ny 2 »wassls) whose hearts are all as false 

As stairs of Sand, wear yet upon their chins 

The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars, 

Who, inward search’d, have livers white as milk; 

And these assume but valour’s excrement 

To render them redoubted! Look on b P 

And you shall see ’t is ourchasetaP Ree ion ; 

Which therein works a miracle in nature, ge 

Making them lightest that wear most of it: 

So are those crisped snaky golden locks 

Which make such wanton gambols with the wind, 

Upon supposed fairness, often known 

To be the dowry of a second head, 

The skull that bred them in the sepulchre. 

Thus ornament is but the guiled shore 

To a most dangerous sea; the beauteous scarf 

Veiling an Indian beauty; in a word, 

The seeming truth which cunning times put on 100 

To entrap the wisest. Therefore, thou gaudy gold, 

Hard food for Midas, I will none of thee; 

Nor none of thee, thou pale and common drudge 

*Tween man and man: but thou, thou meagre lead, 

Which rather threatenest than dost promise aught, 

Thy paleness moves me more than eloquence; 

And here choose I: joy be the consequence! 

Por. | Aside] How all the other passions fleet to air, 

As doubtful thoughts, and rash-embraced despair, 

And shuddering fear, and green-eyed jealousy! 110 

O love, be moderate ; allay thy ecstasy ; 

In measure rain thy joy; scant this excess. 

I feel too much thy blessing: make it less, 

For fear I surfeit. 

Bass. What find I here? 
[ Opening ea leaden casket. 
Fair Portia’s counterfeit! What demi-god 
Hath come so near creation? Move these eyes? 


Scene 2.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 


Or whether, riding on the balls of mine, 
Seem they in motion? Here are severd lips, 
Parted with sugar breath: so sweet a bar 


Should sunder such sweet friends. Here in her hairs 


The painter plays the spider and hath woven 

A golden mesh to entrap the hearts of men 
Faster than gnats in cobwebs: but her eyes,— 
How could he see to do them? having made one, 
Methinks it should have power to steal both his 
And leave itself unfurnish’d. Yet look, how far 


The substance of my praise doth wrong this shadow 


In underprizing it, so far this shadow 


Doth limp behind the substance. Here’s the scroll, 


The continent and summary of my fortune. 
[Reads] You that choose not by the view, 
Chance as fair and choose as true! 
Since this fortune falls to you, 
Be content and seek no new. 
If you be well pleased with this 
And hold your fortune for your bliss, 
Turn you where your lady is 
And claim her with a loving kiss. 
A gentle scroll. Fair lady, by your leave ; 
I come by note, to give and to receive. 
Like one of two contending in a prize, 
That thinks he hath done well in people’s eyes, 
Hearing applause and universal shout, 
Giddy in spirit, still gazing in a doubt 
Whether those peals of praise be his or no; 
So, thrice-fair lady, stand I, even so; 
As doubtful whether what I see be true, 
Until confirm’d, sign’d, ratified by you. 


Por. You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand, 


Such as I am: though for myself alone 

I would not be ambitious in my wish, 

To wish myself much better; yet, for you 

I would be trebled twenty times myself ; 

A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times 
More rich; 


' That only to stand high in your account, 


I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends, 
Exceed account; but the full sum of me 

Is sum of something, which, to term in gross, 
Is an unlesson’d girl, unschool’d, unpractised ; 
Happy in this, she is not yet so old 


120 


130 


140 


150 


160 


36 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 


But she may learn; happier then in this, 
She is not bred so dull but she can learn; 
Happiest of all in that her gentle spirit 
Commits itself to yours to be directed, 
As from her lord, her governor, her king. 
Myself and what is mine to you and yours 
Is now converted: but now I was the lord 
Of this fair mansion, master of my servants, 
Queen o’er myself; and even now, but now, 
This house, these servants and this same myself 
Are yours, my lord: I give them with this ring; 
Which when you part from, lose, or give away, 
Let it presage the ruin of your love 
And be my vantage to exclaim on you. 
Bass. Madam, you have bereft me of all words, 
Only my blood speaks to you in my veins; 
And there is such confusion in my powers, 
As, after some oration fairly spoke 
By a beloved prince, there doth appear 
Among the buzzing pleased multitude; 
Where every something, being blent together, 
Turns to a wild of nothing, save of joy, 
Express’d and not express’d. But when this ring 
Parts from this finger, then parts life from hence: 
O, then be bold to say Bassanio’s dead! 
er. My lord and lady, it is now our time, 
That have stood by and seen our wishes prosper, 
To cry, good joy: good joy, my lord and lady! 
Gra. My lord Bassanio and my gentle lady, 
I wish you all the joy that you can wish; 
For I am sure you can wish none from me: 
And when your honours mean to solemnize 
The bargain of your faith, I do beseech you, 
Even at that time I may be married too. 


{Act III. 


170 


180 


Bass. With all my heart, so thou canst get a wife. 
Gra. I thank your lordship, you have got me one. 


My eyes, my lord, can look as swift as yours: 
You saw the mistress, I beheld the maid; 
You loved, I loved; for intermission 

No more pertains to me, my lord, than you. 
Your fortune stood upon the casket there, 
And so did mine too, as the matter falls ; 
For wooing here until I sweat again, 

And swearing till my very roof was dry 

With oaths of love, at last, if promise last, 


200 


Scene 2.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 37 


I got a promise of this fair one here 
To have her love, provided that your fortune 
Achieved her mistress. 
Por. Is this true, Nerissa? 210 
er. Madan, it is, so you stand pleased withal. 
Bass. And do you, Gratiano, mean good Ease 
Gra. Yes, faith, my lord. 
Bass. Our feast shall be much honourd in your marriage. 
But who comes here? Lorenzo and his infidel? 
What, and my old Venetian friend Salanio? 


Enter LORENZO, JESSICA, and SALANIO, a Messenger 
Jrom Venice. 


Bass. Lorenzo and Salanio, welcome hither; 
If that the youth of my new interest here 
Have power to bid you welcome. By your leave, 
I bid my very friends and countrymen, 220 
Sweet Portia, welcome. 
Por. So do I, my lord: 
They are entirely welcome. 
Lor. I thank your honour. For my part, my lord, 
My purpose was not to have seen you here; 
But meeting with Salanio by the way, 
He did intreat me, past all saying nay, 
To come with him along. 


Salan. I did, my lord; 

And I have reason for it. Signor Antonio 

Commends him to you. [Gives Bassanio a letter. 
Bass. Ere I ope his letter, 

I pray you, tell me how my good friend doth. 230 


Salan. Not sick, my lord, unless it be in mind; 
Nor well, unless in mind: his letter there 
Will show you his estate. 
Gra. Nerissa, cheer yon stranger; bid her welcome. 
Your hand, Salanio: what’s the news from Venice? 
How doth that royal merchant, good Antonio? 
I know he will be glad of our success ; 
We are the Jasons, we have won the fleece. 
Salan. 1 would you had won the fleece that he hath lost. 
Por. There are some shrewd contents in yon same paper, 
That steals the colour from Bassanio’s cheek: 241 
Some dear friend dead; else nothing in the world 
Could turn so much the constitution 
Of any constant man. What, worse and worse! 
With leave, Bassanio; I am half yourself, 


38 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act III. 


Ana { must freely have the half of anything 

That this same paper brings you. 
Bass. O sweet Portia, 

Here are a few of the unpleasant’st words 

That ever blotted paper! Gentle lady, 

When I did first impart my love to you, 250 

I freely told you, all the wealth I had 

Ran in my veins, I was a gentleman; 

And then I told you true: and yet, dear lady, - 

Rating myself at nothing, you shall see 

How much I was a braggart. When I told you 

My state was nothing, I should then have told you 

That I was worse than nothing; for, indeed, 

I have engaged myself to a dear friend, 

Engaged my friend to his mere enemy, 

To feed my means. Here is a letter, lady; 260 

The paper as the body of my friend, 

And every word in it a gaping wound, 

Issuing life-blood. But is it true, Salanio? 

Have all his ventures fail’d? What, not one hit? 

From Tripolis, from Mexico and England, 

From Lisbon, Barbary and India? 

And not one vessel ’scape the dreadful touch 

Of merchant-marring rocks? 
Salan. Not one, my lord. 

Besides, it should appear, that if he had 

The present money to discharge the Jew, 270 

He would not take it. Never did I know 

A creature, that did bear the shape of man, 

-So keen and greedy to confound a man: 

He plies the duke at morning and at night, 

And doth impeach the freedom of the state, 

If they deny him justice: twenty merchants, 

The duke himself, and the magnificoes 

Of greatest port, have all persuaded with him; 

But none can drive him from the envious plea 

Of forfeiture, of justice and his bond. 280 
Jes. When I was with him I have heard him swear 

To Tubal and to Chus, his countrymen, 

That he would rather have Antonio’s flesh 

Than twenty times the value of the sum 

That he did owe him: and I know, my lord, 

If law, authority and power deny not, 

It will go hard with poor Antonio. 
Por. Is it ycur dear friend that is thus in trouble? 


Scene 3.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 39 


Bass. The dearest friend to me, the kindest man, 

The best-condition’d and unwearied spirit 290 
In doing courtesies, and one in whom 

The ancient Roman honour more appears 

Than any that draws breath in Italy. 

Por. What sum owes he the Jew? 

Bass. For me three thousand ducats. 

Por. What, no more? 
Pay him six thousand, and deface the bond; 

Double six thousand, and then treble that, 

Before a friend of this description 

Shall lose a hair through Bassanio’s fault. 

First go with me to church and call me wife, 300 
And then away to Venice to your friend ; 

For never shall you lie by Portia’s side 

With an unquiet soul. You shall have gold 

To pay the petty debt twenty times over: 

When it is paid, bring your true friend along. 

My maid Nerissa and myself meantime 

Will live as maids and widows, Come, away! 

For you shall hence upon your wedding-day : 

Bid your friends welcome, show a merry cheer: 

Since you are dear bought, I will love you dear. 310 
But let me hear the letter of your friend. 

Bass. |Reads| Sweet Bassanio, my ships have all miscarried, 
my creditors grow cruel, my estate is very low, my bond to 
the Jew is forfeit; and since in paying it, it is impossible I 
should live, all debts are cleared between you and I. If I 
might but see you at my death—notwithstanding, use your 
pleasure: if your love do not persuade you to come, let not 
my letter. 

Por. O love, dispatch all business, and be gone! 

Bass. Since I have your good leave to go away, 320 

I will make haste: but, till I come again, 
No bed shall e’er be guilty of my stay, 
No rest be interposer ’twixt ustwain. [2xeunt. 


SCENE III. Venice. A street. 


Enter SHYLOCK, SALARINO, ANTONIO, avd Gaoler. 


Shy. Gaoler, look to him: tell not me of mercy ; 
This is the fool that lent out money gratis: 
Gaoler, look to him. 

Ant. Hear me yet, good Shylock. 


40 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act III. 


Shy. I'll have my bond; speak not against my bond: 


I have sworn an oath that I will have my bond. 
Thou call’dst me dog before thou hadst a cause; 
But, since I am a dog, beware my fangs: 

The duke shall grant me justice. I do wonder, 
Thou naughty gaoler, that thou art so fond 

To come abroad with him at his request. 

Ant, | pray thee, hear me speak. 

Shy. 1’ll have my bond; I will not hear thee speak: 
Ill have my bond; and therefore speak no more. 
I’ll not be made a soft and dull-eyed fool, 

To shake the head, relent, and sigh, and yield 
To Christian intercessors. Follow not; 


Io 


I’ll have no speaking: I will have my bond. [Exit. 


Salar. It is the most impenetrable cur 
That ever kept with men. 

Ant. Let him alone: 
I’ll follow him no more with bootless prayers. 
He seeks my life; his reason well I know: 
I oft deliver’d from his forfeitures 
Many that have at times made moan to me; 
Therefore he hates me. 

Salar. I am sure the duke 
Will never grant this forfeiture to hold. 

Ant. The duke cannot deny the course of law, 
For the commodity that strangers have 
With us in Venice. If it be denied, 
’T will much impeach the justice of his state: 
Since that the trade and profit of the city 
Consisteth of all nations. Therefore, go: 
These griefs and losses have so bated me, 
That I shall hardly spare a pound of flesh 
To-morrow to my bloody creditor. 
Well, gaoler, on. Pray God, Bassanio come 


20 


30 


To see me pay his debt, and then I care not! [Exeunt. 


SCENE IV. Belmont. A room in PORTIA’S house. 


Enter PORTIA, NERISSA, LORENZO, JESSICA, and BALTHASAR. 


Lor. Madam, although I speak it in your presence, 
You have a noble and a true conceit 
Of god-like amity; which appears most strongly 
In bearing thus the absence of your lord. 
But if you knew to whom you show this honour, 


Scene 4.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 4! 


How true a gentleman you send relief, 
How dear a lover of my lord your husband, 
I know you would be prouder of the work 
Than customary bounty can enforce you. 
Por. I never did repent for doing good, 10 
Nor shall not now: for in companions 
That do converse and waste the time together, 
Whose souls do bear an equal yoke of love, 
There must be needs a like proportion 
Of lineaments, of manners and of spirit; 
Which makes me think that this Antonio, 
Being the bosom lover of my lord, 
Must needs be like my lord. If it be so, 
How little is the cost I have bestow’d 
In purchasing the semblance of my soul 20 
From out the state of hellish misery! 
This comes too near the praising of myself; 
Therefore no more of it: hear other things. 
Lorenzo, I commit into your hands 
The husbandry and manage of my house 
Until my lord’s return: for mine own part, 
I have toward heaven breathed a secret vow 
To live in prayer and contemplation, 
Only attended by Nerissa here, 
Until her husband and my lord’s return: 30 
There is a monastery two miles off; 
And there will we abide. I do desire you 
Not to deny this imposition ; 
The which my love and some necessity 
Now lays upon you. 
Lor. Madam, with all my heart ; 
I shall obey you in all fair commands. 
Por. My people do already know my mind, 
And will acknowledge you and Jessica 
In place of Lord Bassanio and myself. 
And so farewell, till we shall meet again. 40 
Lor. Fair thoughts and happy hours attend on you! 
Jes. 1 wish your ladyship all heart’s content. 
Por. 1 thank you for your wish, and am well pleased 
To wish it back on you: fare you well, Jessica. 
[Exeunt Jessica and Lorenzo. 
Now, Balthasar, 
As I have ever found thee honest-true, 
So let me find thee still. Take this same letter, 
And use thou all the endeavour of a man 


42 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act III. 


In speed to Padua: see thou render this 
Into my cousin’s hand, Doctor Bellario; 50 
And, look, what notes and garments he doth give thee, 
Bring them, I pray thee, with imagined speed 
Unto the traject, to the common ferry 
Which trades to Venice. Waste no time in words, 
But get thee gone: I shall be there before thee. 
Balth. Madam, I go with all convenient speed. [Exiz. 
Por. Come on, Nerissa; I have work in hand 
That you yet know not of: we’ll see our husbands 
Before they think of us. 
Ner. Shall they see us? 
Por. They shall, Nerissa; but in such a habit, 60 
That they shall think we are accomplished 
With that we lack. I’Il hold thee any wager, 
When we are both accoutred like young men, 
I’ll prove the prettier fellow of the two, 
And wear my dagger with the braver grace, 
And speak between the change of man and boy 
With a reed voice, and turn two mincing steps 
Into a manly stride, and speak of frays 
Like a fine bragging youth, and tell quaint lies, 
How honourable ladies sought my love, 70 
Which I denying, they fell sick and died; ' 
I could not do withal; then I’ll repent, 
And wish, for all that, that I had not kill’d them; 
And twenty of these puny lies I'll tell, 
That men shall swear I have discontinued school 
Above a twelvemonth. I have within my mind 
A thousand raw tricks of these bragging Jacks, 
Which I will practise. 
But come, I'll tell thee all my whole device 


When I am in my coach, which stays for us 80 
At the park gate; and therefore haste away, 
For we must measure twenty miles to-day. [Exeunt. 


SCENE V. The same. A garden. 


Enter LAUNCELOT and JESSICA. 


Laun. Yes, truly; for, look you, the sins of the father are 
to be laid upon the children: therefore, I promise ye, I fear 
you. I was always plain with you, and so now I speak my 
agitation of the matter: therefore be of good cheer, for truly 
I think you are damned. 


Scene 5.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 43 


Jes. 1 shall be saved by-my husband; he hath made me a 
Christian. 

Laun. Truly, the more to blame he: we were Christians 
enow before; e’en as many as could well live, one by another. 
This making of Christians will raise the price of hogs: if we 
grow all to be pork-eaters, we shall not shortly have a rasher 
on the coals for money. 12 


Enter LORENZO. 


Jes. 1'll tell my husband, Launcelot, what you say: here 
he comes. 

Lor. 1 shall grow jealous of you shortly, Launcelot, if you 
thus get my wife into corners. 

Jes. Nay, you need not fear us, Lorenzo: Launcelot and I 
are out. He tells me flatly, there is no mercy for me in 
heaven, because I am a Jew’s daughter: and he says, you 
are no good member of the commonwealth, for in converting 
Jews to Christians, you raise the price of pork. 21 

Lor. How every fool can play upon the word! I think the 
best grace of wit will shortly turn into silence, and discourse 
grow commendable m none only but parrots. Go in, sirrah; 
bid them prepare for dinner. 

Laun. That is done, sir; they have all stomachs. 

Lor. Goodly Lord, what a wit-snapper are you! then bid 
them prepare dinner. 

Laun. That is done too, sir; only ‘cover’ is the word. 

Lor. Will you cover then, sir? 30 

Laun. Not so, sir, neither; I know my duty. 

Lor. Yet more quarrelling with occasion! Wilt thou show 
the whole wealth of thy wit in an instant? I pray thee, 
understand a plain man in his plain meaning: go to thy 
fellows; bid them cover the table, serve in the meat, and we 
will come in to dinner. 

Laun. For the table, sir, it shall be served in; for the meat, 
sir, it shall be covered ; for your coming in to dinner, sir, why, 
let it be as humours and conceits shall govern. [ Exit. 

Lor. O dear discretion, how his words are suited ! 40 
The fool hath planted in his memory 
An army of good words; and I do know 
A many fools, that stand in better place, 

Garnish’d like him, that for a tricksy word 
Defy the matter. How cheer’st thou, Jessica? 
And now, good sweet, say thy opinion, 

How dost thou like the Lord Bassanio’s wife? 

Jes. Past all expressing. It is very meet 


44 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act IV. 


The Lord Bassanio live an upright life; 
For, having such a blessing in his lady, 50 
He finds the joys of heaven here on earth; 
And if on earth he do not merit it, 
In reason he should never come to heaven. 
Why, if two gods should play some heavenly match 
And on the wager lay two earthly women, 
And Portia one, there must be something else 
Pawn’d with the other, for the poor rude world 
Hath not her fellow. 
Lor. Even such a husband 
Hast thou of me as she is for a wife. 
Jes. Nay, but ask my opinion too of that. 60 
Lor. I will anon: first, let us go to dinner. 
Jes. Nay, let me praise you while I have a stomach. 
Lor. No, pray thee, let it serve for table-talk, 
Then, howsoe’er thou speak’st, ’mong other things 
I shall digest it. 
Jes. Well, I’ll set you forth. [Exeunt. 


ACLs LV. 
SCENE I. Venice. A court of justice. 


Enter the DUKE, the Magnificoes, ANTONIO, BASSANIO, 
GRATIANO, SALANIO, and others. 


Duke. What, is Antonio here? 
Ant. Ready, so please your grace. 
Duke. 1 am sorry for thee: thou art come to answer 
A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch 
Uncapable of pity, void and empty 
From any dram of mercy. 
Ant. I have heard 
Your grace hath ta’en great pains to qualify 
His rigorous course; but since he stands obdurate 
And that no lawful means can carry me 
Out of his envy’s reach, I do oppose 10 
My patience to his fury, and am arm’d 
To suffer, with a quietness of spirit, 
The very tyranny and rage of his. 
Duke. Go one, and call the Jew into the court. 
Salan. He is ready at the door: he comes, my lord. 


“Scene 1.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 


Enter SHYLOCK. 


Duke. Make room, and let him stand before our face. 


Shylock, the world thinks, and I think so too, 
That thou but lead’st this fashion of thy malice 
To the last hour of act; and then ’tis thought 
Thou ’lt show thy mercy and remorse more strange 
Than is thy strange apparent cruelty ; 
And where thou now exact’st the penalty, 
Which is a pound of this poor merchant’s flesh, 
Thou wilt not only loose the forfeiture, 
But, touch’d with human gentleness and love, 
Forgive a moiety of the principal ; 
Glancing an eye of pity on his losses, 
That have of late so huddled on his back, 
Enow to press a royal merchant down 
And pluck commiseration of his state 
From brassy bosoms and rough hearts of flint, 
From stubborn Turks and Tartars, never train’d 
To offices of tender courtesy. 
We all expect a gentle answer, Jew. 

Shy. I have possess’d your grace of what I purpose; 
And by our holy Sabbath have I sworn 
To have the due and forfeit of my bond: 
If you deny it, let the danger light 
Upon your charter and your city’s freedom. 
You'll ask me, why I rather choose to have 
A weight of carrion flesh than to receive 
Three thousand ducats: I’ll not answer that: 
But, say, it is my humour: is it answerd? 
What if my house be troubled with a rat 
And I be pleased to give ten thousand ducats 
To have it baned? What, are you answerd yet? 
Some men there are love not a gaping pig; 
Some, that are mad if they behold a cat; 
And others, at the bagpipe; for affection, 
Mistress of passion, sways it to the mood 
Of what it likes or loathes. Now, for your answer: 
As there is no firm reason to be renderd, 
Why he cannot abide a gaping pig; 
Why he, a harmless necessary cat; 
Why he, a woollen bagpipe ; 
So can I give no reason, nor I will not, 
More than a lodged hate and a certain loathing 
I bear Antonio, that I follow thus 
A losing suit against him. Are you answerd? 

(™330) F 


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46 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act IV. PICO, 


Bass. This is no answer, thou unfeeling nan, 60 
To excuse the current of thy cruelty. 
Shy. 1 am not bound to please thee with my answers. 
Bass. Do all men kill the things they do not love? 
Shy. Hates any man the thing he would not kill? 
Bass. Every offence is not a hate at first. 
Shy. What, wouldst thou have a serpent sting thee twice? 
Ant. I pray you, think you question with the Jew: 
You may as well go stand upon the beach 
And bid the main flood bate his usual height ; 
You may as well use question with the wolf 70 
Why he hath made the ewe bleat for the lamb; 
You may as well forbid the mountain pines 
To wag their high tops and to make no noise, 
When they are fretten with the gusts of heaven ; 
You may as well do any thing most hard, 
As seek to soften that—than which what’s harder?— 
His Jewish heart: therefore, I do beseech you, 
Make no more offers, use no farther means, 
But with all brief and plain conveniency 
Let me have judgement and the Jew his will. 80 
Bass. For thy three thousand ducats here is Six. 
Shy. If every ducat in six thousand ducats 
Were in six parts and every part a ducat, 
I would not draw them; I would have my bond. 
Duke. How shalt thou hope for mercy, rendering none? 
Shy. What judgement shall I dread, doing no wrong? 
You have among you many a purchased slave, 
Which, like your asses and your dogs and mules, 
You use in abject and in slavish parts, 
Because you bought them: shall I say to you, go 
Let them be free, marry them to your heirs? 
Why sweat they under burthens? let their beds 
Be made as soft as yours and let their palates 
Be season’d with such viands? You will answer 
‘The slaves are ours’: so do I answer you: 
The pound of flesh, which I demand of him, 
Is dearly bought; ’tis mine and I will have it. 
If you deny me, fie upon your law! 
There is no force in the decrees of Venice. 
I stand for judgement: answer; shall I have it? 100 
Duke. Upon my power I may dismiss this court, 
Unless Bellario, a learned doctor, 
Whom I have sent for to determine this, 
Come here to-day. 


Beene 1.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 


Salan. My lord, here stays without 
A messenger with letters from the doctor, 
New come from Padua. 

Duke. Bring us the letters; call the messenger. 


Bass. Good cheer, Antonio! What, man, courage yet! 


The Jew shall have my flesh, blood, bones and all, 

Ere thou shalt lose for me one drop of blood. 
Ant. | am a tainted wether of the flock, 

Meetest for death: the weakest kind of fruit 

Drops earliest to the ground; and so let me: 

You cannot better be employ’d, Bassanio, 

Than to live still and write mine epitaph. 


Enter NERISSA, dressed like a lawyer's clerk. 


Duke. Came you from Padua, from Bellario? 


Ner. From both, my lord. Bellario greets your grace. 


47 


IIo 


[Presenting a letter. 


Bass. Why dost thou whet thy knife so earnestly? 
Shy. To cut the forfeiture from that bankrupt there. 
Gra. Not on thy sole, but on thy soul, harsh Jew, 

Thou makest thy knife keen: but no metal can, 

No, not the hangman’s axe, bear half the keenness 

Of thy sharp envy. Can no prayers pierce thee? 
Shy. No, none that thou hast wit enough to make. 
Gra. O, be thou damn’d, inexorable dog! 

And for thy life let justice be accused. 

Thou almost makest me waver in my faith 

To hold opinion with Pythagoras, 

That souls of animals infuse themselves 

Into the trunks of men: thy currish spirit 

Govern’d a wolf, who, hang’d for human slaughter, 

Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet, 

And, whilst thou lay’st in thy unhallow’d dam, 

Infused itselfin thee; for thy desires 

Are wolvish, bloody, starved and ravenous. 

Shy. Till thou canst rail the seal from off my bond, 
Thou but offend’st thy lungs to speak so loud: 
Repair thy wit, good youth, or it will fall 
To cureless ruin. I stand here for law. 

Duke. This letter from Bellario doth commend 
A young and learned doctor to our court. 

Where is he? 

er. He attendeth here hard by, 

To know your answer, whether you’ll admit him. 


120 


130 


140 


48 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act IV. 


Duke. With all my heart. Some three or four of you 
Go give him courteous conduct to this place. 

Meantime the ceyrt shall hear Bellario’s letter. 

Clerk. [Reads| Your grace shall understand that at the 
receipt of your letter I am very sick: but in the instant that 
your messenger came, in loving visitation was with me a 
young doctor of Rome; his name is Balthasar. I acquainted 
him with the cause in controversy between the Jew and 
Antonio the merchant: we turned o’er many books together: 
he is furnished with my opinion; which, bettered with his 
own learning, the greatness whereof I cannot enough com- 
mend, comes with him, at my importunity, to fill up your 
grace’s request in my stead. I beseech you, let his lack of 
years be no impediment to let him lack a reverend estimation; 
for I never knew so young a body with so olda head. I leave 
him to your gracious acceptance, whose trial shall better 
publish his commendation. 160 

Duke. You hear the learn’d Bellario, what he writes: 

And here, I take it, is the doctor come. 


Enter PoRTIA, dressed like a doctor of laws. 


Give me your hand. Come you from old Bellario? 
Por. 1 did, my lord. 
Duke. You are welcome: take your place. 
Are you acquainted with the difference 
That holds this present question in the court? 
Por. 1 am informed throughly of the cause. 
Which is the merchant here, and which the Jew? 
Duke. Antonio and old Shylock, both stand forth. 
Por. Is your name Shylock? 
Shy. Shylock is my name. 170 
Por. Of a strange nature is the suit you follow; 
Yet in such rule that the Venetian law 
Cannot impugn you as you do proceed. 
You stand within his danger, do you not? 
Ant. Ay, so he says. 


Por: Do you confess the bond? 
Ant. I do. 
Por. Then must the Jew be merciful. 


Shy. On what compulsion must I? tell me that. 

Por. The quality of mercy is not strain’d, 
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; 180 
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: 


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’T is mightiest in the mightiest ! it becomes 
The throned monarch better than his crown; 
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, 
The attribute to awe and majesty, 
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; 
But mercy is above this sceptred sway; 
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, 
It is an attribute to God himself; 
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s 190 
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, 
Though justice be thy plea, consider this, 
That, in the course of justice, none of us 
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy ; 
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render 
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much 
To mitigate the justice of thy plea; 
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice 
Must needs give sentence ’gainst the merchant there. 

Shy. My deeds upon my head! I crave the law, 200 
The penalty and forfeit of my bond. 

Por. Is he not able to discharge the money? 

Bass. Yes, here I tender it for him in the court; 

Yea, twice the sum: if that will not suffice, 

I will be bound to pay it ten times o’er; 

On forfeit of my hands, my head, my heart: 

If this will not suffice, it must appear 

That malice bears down truth. And I beseech you, 

Wrest once the law to your authority: 

To do a great right, do a little wrong, 210 
And curb this cruel devil of his will. 

Por. It must not be; there is no power in Venice 
Can alter a decree established : ye 
*T will be recorded for a precedent, Ty i pee 
And many an error by the same example iis 
Will rush into the state: it cannot be. 

Shy. A Daniel come to judgement! yea, a Daniel! 

O wise young judge, how I do honour thee! 
Por. I pray you, let me look upon the bond. 
Shy. Here ’tis, most reverend doctor, here it is. 220 


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Por. Shyl here’s thrice thy money, offer d thes. ey 
Shy. An oath, an oath, I have’an6ath in heaven: ~ """ 8 © 


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Shall I lay perjury upon my soul? 
No, not for Venice. 


Por. Why, this bond is forfeit; © v4 /wany fa. LA 


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50 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act IV. 


A pound of flesh, to be by him cut off 
Nearest the merchant’s heart. Be merciful: 
Take thrice thy money; bid me tear the bond. 
Shy. When it is paid according to the tenour. 
It doth appear you are a worthy judge; 230 
You know the law, your exposition 
Hath been most sound: I charge you by the law, 
Whereof you are a well-deserving pillar, 
Proceed to judgement: by my soul I swear 
There is no power in the tongue of man 
To alter me: I stay here on my bond. 
Ant. Most heartily I do beseech the court 
To give the judgement. 


Por. Why then, thus it is: 
You must prepare your bosom for his knife. 
Shy. O noble judge! O excellent young man! 240 


Por. For the intent and purpose of the law 
Hath full relation to the penalty, 
Which here appeareth due upon the bond. 

Shy. ’T is very true: O wise and upright judge! 
How much more elder art thou than thy looks! 

Por. Therefore lay bare your bosom. 

Shy. Ay, his breast: 
So says the bond: doth it not, noble judge? 
‘ Nearest his heart’: those are the very words. 

Por. It is so. Are there balance here to weigh 
The flesh? 

Shy. I_have them.ready... set aeeemnineneamninaeianiiiabtee ee 2 50 





Lay fy f) To stop his wounds,.lest.he do bleed to death. 
od xy. Is it so nominated in the bond?” ‘2 
~\S Por. It is not so express’d: but what of that? 


*T were good you do so much for charity. 
Shy. 1 cannot find it; ’tis not in the bond. 
Por. You, merchant, have you any thing to say? 
Ant. But little: I am arm’d and well prepared. 
Give me your hand, Bassanio: fare you well! 
Grieve not that I am fallen to this for you; 260 
For herein Fortune shows herself more kind 
Than is her custom: it is still her use 
To let the wretched man outlive his wealth, 
To view with hollow eye and wrinkled brow 
An age of poverty; from which lingering penance 
Of such misery doth she cut me off. 
Commend me to your honourable wife: 






Scene 1r.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 51 


Tell her the process of Antonio’s end; 

Say how I loved you, speak me fair in death; 

And, when the tale is told, bid her be judge 270 
Whether Bassanio had not once a love. 

Repent but you that you shall lose your friend, 

And he repents not that he pays your debt; 

For if the Jew do cut but deep enough, 

I’ll pay it presently with all my heart. 

Bass. Antonio, I am married to a wife 

Which is as dear to me as life itself; 

But life itself, my wife, and all the world, 

Are not with me esteem’d above thy life: 

I would lose all, ay, sacrifice them all 280 
Here to this devil, to deliver you. 

Por. Your wife would give you little thanks for that, 
If she were by, to hear you make the offer. 

Gra. I have a wife, whom, I protest, I love: 

I would she were in heaven, so she could 

Entreat some power to change this currish Jew. 
Wer. ’T is well you offer it behind her back; 

The wish would make else an unquiet house. 

Shy. These be the Christian husbands. I have a daughter; 
Would any of the stock of Barrabas 290 
Had been her husband rather than a Christian. [ Aside. 
We trifle time: I pray thee, pursue sentence. 

Por. A pound of that same merchant’s flesh is thine: 

The court awards it, and the law doth give it. 

Shy. Most rightful judge! 

Por. And you must cut this flesh from off his breast: 
The law allows it, and the court awards it. 

Shy. Most learned judge! A sentence! Come, prepare! 
or. Tarry a little; there is something else. 

‘ This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood; 300 
\The words expressly are ‘a pound of flesh’: 

ake then thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh; 

ut, in the cutting it, if thou dost shed 

ne drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods 

Are, by the laws of Venice, confiscate 

Unto the state of Venice. 

Gra. O upright judge! Mark, Jew: O learned judge! 

Shy. Is that the law? 

Por. Thyself shalt see the act: 

For, as thou urgest justice, be assured 
Thou shalt have justice, more than thou desirest. 310 
Gra. O learned judge! Mark, Jew: a learned judge! 





52 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 


Shy. 1 take this offer, then; pay the bond thrice 
And let the Christian go. 


id Bass. Here is the money. 


Por. Soft! 
The Jew shall have all justice; soft! no haste: 
He shall have nothing but the penalty. 
Gra. O Jew! an upright judge, a learned judge! 
Por. Therefore prepare thee to cut off the flesh. 
Shed thou no blood, nor cut thou less nor more 
But just a pound of ‘flesh: if thou cut’st more 
Or less than a just pound, be it but so much 


“As makes it light or heavy in the substance 


Of the division of the twentieth part 

Of one poor scruple, nay, if the scale do turn 

But in the estimation of a hair, 

Thou diest and all thy goods are confiscate. 
Gra. A second Daniel, a Daniel, Jew! 

Now, infidel, I have you on the hip. 


[Act 


Por. Why doth the Jew pause? take thy forfeiture. 


Shy. Give me my principal, and let me go. 
Bass. 1 have it ready for thee; here it is. 
Por. He hath refused it in the open court: 
He shall have merely justice and his bond. 
Gra. A Daniel, still say I, a second Daniel! 

I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word. 
Shy. Shall I not have barely my principal? 
Por. Thou shalt have nothing but the forfeiture, 

To be so taken at thy peril, Jew. 

Shy. Why, then the devil give nies good of it! 

I’ll stay no longer question. 


fen Por. Tarry, Tees 


/ The law hath yet another hold on you. 


It is enacted in the laws of Venice, 

If it be proved against an alien 

That by direct or indirect attempts 

He seek the life of any citizen, 

The party ’gainst the which he did contrive 
Shall seize one half his goods; the other half 
Comes to the privy coffer of the state; 

And the offender’s life lies in the mercy 

Of the duke only, ’gainst all other voice. 

In which predicament, I say, thou stand’st ; 
For it appears, by manifest proceeding, 
That indirectly and directly too 

Thou hast contrived against the very life 


IV. 


320 


33° 


35° 


Scener.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 53 


Of the defendant; and thou hast incurr’d 
The danger formerly by me rehearsed. 
Down therefore and beg mercy of the duke. 
Gra. Beg that thou mayst have leave to hang thyself: 
And yet, thy wealth being forfeit to the state, 
Thou hast not left the value of a cord; 360 
Therefore thou must be hang’d at the ‘state’s charge. 
Duke. That thou shalt see the difference of our spirits, 
I pardon thee thy life before thou ask it: 
For half thy wealth, it is Antonio’s ; 
The other half comes to the general state, 
Which humbleness may drive unto a fine. 
Por. Ay, for the state, not for Antonio. 
Shy. Nay, take my life and all; pardon not that: 
You take my house when you do take the prop 
That,doth sustain my house; you take my life 370 
When you do take the means whereby I live. 
Por. What mercy can you render him, Antonio? 
Gra. A halter gratis; nothing else, for God’s sake. 
Ant. So please my lord the duke and all the court 
To qui the fine for one half of his goods, 
I am content,—so he will let me have 
The other halfin use,—to render it, 
Upon his death, unto the gentleman 
_ That latély stole his daughter : 


Two things/provided more, that, for this” eavoud, 380 
pecome a Christiam; 


Here in the co ; 5 all he dies possess’d ot 
Unto his son Lorenzo and his daughter. 
Duke. He shall do this, or else I do recant 
The pardon that I late pronounced here. 
Por. Art thou contented, Jew? what dost thou say? 
Shy. 1 am content. 
Por. Clerk, draw a deed of gift. 
Shy. I pray you, give me leave to go from hence; 
I am not well: send the deed after me, 390 
™ And I will sign it. 
Duke. Get thee gone, but do it. 
Gra. In christening shalt thou have two godfathers: 
Had I been judge, thou shouldst have had ten more, 
To bring thee to the gallows, not the font. [EZazt Shylock, 
Duke. Sir, 1 entreat you home with me to dinner. 
Por. 1 humbly do desire your grace of pardon: 
I must away this night toward Padua, 


f 


54 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act IV. 


And it is meet I presently set forth. 

Duke. 1 am sorry that your leisure serves you not. 
Antonio, gratify this gentleman, 490 
For, in my mind, you are much bound to him. 

[Exeunt Duke and his train. 

Bass. Most worthy gentleman, I and my friend 
Have by your wisdom been this day acquitted 
Of grievous penalties; in lieu whereof, 

Three thousand ducats, due unto the Jew, 
We freely cope your courteous pains withal. 

Ant. And stand indebted, over and above, 
In love and service to you evermore. 

Por. He is well paid that is well satisfied ; 

And I, delivering you, am satisfied 410 
And therein do account myself well paid: 
My mind was never yet more mercenary. 
I pray you, know me when we meet again: 
I wish you well, and so I take my leave. 
Bass. Dear sir, of force I must attempt you further: 
Take some remembrance of us, as a tribute, 
Not as a fee: grant me two things, I pray you, 
Not to deny me, and to pardon me. 

Por. You press me far, and therefore I will yield. 419 
[Zo Ant.] Give me your gloves, I’ll wear them for your sake; 
[Zo Bass.|] And, for your love, I ll take this ring from you: 
Do not draw back your hand; I’ll take no more; 

And you in love shall not deny me this. 

Bass. This ring, good sir, alas, it is a trifle! 
I will not shame myself to give you this. 

Por. 1 will have nothing else but only this; 
And now methinks I have a mind to it. 

Bass. There’s more depends on this than on the value. 
The dearest ring in Venice will I give you, 

And find it out by proclamation: 430 
Only for this, I pray you, pardon me. 
Por. 1 see, sir, you are liberal in offers: 
You taught me first to beg; and now methinks 
You teach me how a beggar should be answer’d. 
Bass. Good sir, this ring was given me by my wife; 
And when she put it on, she made me vow 
That I should neither sell nor give nor lose it. 
Por. That ’scuse serves many men to save their gifts. 
An if your wife be not a mad-woman, 
And know how well I have deserved the ring, 440 
She would not hold out enemy for ever, 


Scene 2.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 55 


For giving it tome. Well, peace be with you! 
[Axeunt Portia and Nerissa. 
Ant. My Lord Bassanio, let him have the ring: 
Let his deservings and my love withal 
Be valued,’gainst your wife’s commandment. 
Bass. Go, Gratiano, run and overtake him; 
Give him the ring, and bring him, if thou canst, 
Unto Antonio’s house: away! make haste. [Ax7t Gratiano. 
Come, you and I will thither presently; 
And in the morning early will we both 450 
Fly toward Belmont: come, Antonio. [Exeunt. 


SCENE II. Zhe same. A Street. 


Enter PORTIA and NERISSA. 


Por. Inquire the Jew’s house out, give him this deed 
And let him sign it: we’ll away to-night 
And be a day before our husbands home: 
This deed will be well welcome to Lorenzo. 


Enter GRATIANO. 


Gra. Fair sir, you are well o’erta’en: 
My Lord Bassanio upon more advice 
Hath sent you here this ring, and doth entreat 
Your company at dinner. 


Por. That cannot be: 
His ring I do accept most thankfully: 
And so, I pray you, tell him: furthermore, 10 


I pray you, show my youth old Shylock’s house. 
Gra. That will I do. 
Ver. Sir, I would speak with you. 
[Astde to Por.| 1’ll see if I can get my husband’s ring, 
Which I did make him swear to keep for ever. 
Por. [Aside to Ner.| Thou mayst, I warrant. 
We shall have old swearing 
That they did give the rings away to men; 
But we'll outface them, and outswear them too. 
{4 loud] Away! make haste: thou know’st where I will tarry. 
Ner. Come, good sir, will you show me to this house? 
[Exeunt. 


56 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act V. 


ACT V. 
SCENE I. Belmont. Avenue to PORTIA’S house. 


Enter LORENZO and JESSICA. 


Lor. The moon shines bright: in such a night as this, 
When the sweet wind did gently kiss thé trees 
And they did make no noise, in such a night 
Troilus methinks mounted the Troyan walls 
And sigh’d his soul toward the Grecian tents, 
Where Cressid lay that night. 
Jes. In such a night 
Did Thisbe fearfully o’ertrip the dew, 
And saw the lion’s shadow ere himself, 
And ran dismay’d away. 
Lor. In such a night 
Stood Dido with a willow in her hand Ie 
Upon the wild sea banks, and waft her love 
To come again to Carthage. 
Jes. In such a night 
Medea gather’d the enchanted herbs 
That did renew old Aéson. 
Lor. In such a night 
Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew 
And with an unthrift love did run from Venice 
As far as Belmont. 
Jes. In such a night 
Did young Lorenzo swear he loved her well, 
Stealing her soul with many vows of faith 
And ne’er a true one. 
Lor. In such a night 20 
Did pretty Jessica, like a little shrew, 
Slander her love, and he forgave it her. 
Jes. | would out-night you, did no body come; 
But, hark, I hear the footing of a man. 


Enter STEPHANO. 


Lor. Who comes so fast in silence of the night? 
Steph. A friend. 
Lor. A friend! what friend? your name, I pray you, 
friend? 
Steph. Stephano is my name; and I bring word 
My mistress will before the break of day 
Be here at Belmont: she doth stray about 30 


Scene r.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 57 


By holy crosses, where she kneels and prays 
For happy wedlock hours. 
Lor. Who comes with her? 
Steph. None but a holy hermit and her maid. 
I pray you, is my master yet return’d? 
Lor. He is not, nor we have not heard from him. 
But go we in, I pray thee, Jessica, 
And ceremoniously let us prepare 
Some welcome for the mistress of the house. 


Enter LAUNCELOT. 


Laun. Sola, sola! wo ha, ho! sola, sola! 
Lor. Who calls? 40 
Laun. Sola! did you see Master Lorenzo? 
Master Lorenzo, sola, sola! 
Lor. Leave hollaing, man: here. 
Laun. Sola! where? where? 
Lor. Here. 
Laun. Tell him there’s a post come from my master, with 
his horn full of good news: my master will be here ere 


morning. [E-xit. 
Lor. Sweet soul, let’s in, and there expect their coming. 
And yet no matter: why should we go in? 50 


My friend Stephano, signify, I pray you, 

Within the house, your mistress is at hand ; 

And bring your music forth into the air. [Exit Stephano. 
How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! 

Here will we sit and let the sounds of music 

Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night 

Become the touches of sweet harmony. 

Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven 

Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold: 

There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st 60 
But in his motion like an angel sings, 

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins; 

Such harmony is in immortal souls; 

But whilst this muddy vesture of decay 

Doth grossly close us in, we cannot hear it. 


Enter Musicians. 


Come, ho! and wake Diana with a hymn: 

With sweetest touches pierce your mistress’ ear 

And draw her home with music. [Mustc. 
Jes. 1 am never merry when I hear sweet music. 
Lor. The reason is, your spirits are attentive: 70 


58 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act V. 


For do but note a wild and wanton herd, 

Or race of youthful and unhandled colts, 

Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud, 
Which is the hot condition of their blood ; 

If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound, 

Or any air of music touch their ears, 

You shall perceive them make a mutual stand, 
Their savage eyes turn’d to a modest gaze 

By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet 
Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods; 80 
Since nought so stockish, hard and full of rage, 

But music for the time doth change his nature. 

The man that hath no music in himself, 

Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, 

Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils; 

The motions of his spirit are dull as night 

And his affections dark as Erebus: 

Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music. 


Enter PORTIA and NERISSA. 


Por. That light we see is burning in my hall. 
How far that little candle throws his beams! 90 
So shines a good deed in a naughty world. 
ver. When the moon shone, we did not see the candle. 
Por. So doth the greater glory dim the less: 
A substitute shines brightly as a king 
Until a king be by, and then his state 
Empties itself, as doth an inland brook 
Into the main of waters. Music! hark! 
er. It is your music, madam, of the house. 
Por. Nothing is good, I see, without respect: 
Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day. 100 
Ver. Silence bestows that virtue on it, madam. 
Por. The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark 
When neither is attended, and I think 
The nightingale, if she should sing by day, 
When every goose is cackling, would be thought 
No better a musician than the wren. 
How many things by season season’d are 
To their right praise and true perfection ! 
Peace, ho! the moon sleeps with Endymion 
And would not be awaked. [Music ceases. 
Lor. That is the voice, 119 
Or I am much deceived, of Portia. 


Scene 1.] THE MERCHANT OF. VENICE 59 


Por. He knows me as the blind man knows the cuckoo, 
By the bad voice. 

Lor. Dear lady, welcome home. 

Por. We have been praying for our husbands’ healths, 
Which speed, we hope, the better for our words. 
Are they return’d? 

Lor. Madam, they are not yet; 
But there is come a messenger before, 
To signify their coming. 


Por. Go in, Nerissa; 
Give order to my servants that they take 
No note at all of our being absent hence; 120 
Nor you, Lorenzo; Jessica, nor you. [A tucket sounds. 


Lor. Your husband is at hand; I hear his trumpet: 
We are no tell-tales, madam; fear you not. 

Por. This night methinks is but the daylight sick; 
It looks a little paler: ’tis a day, 
Such as the day is when the sun is hid. 


Enter BASSANIO, ANTONIO, GRATIANO, and their followers. 


Bass. We should hold day with the Antipodes, 
If you would walk in absence of the sun. 
Por. Let me give light, but let me not be light; 
For a light wife doth make a heavy husband, 130 
And never be Bassanio so for me: 
But God sort all! You are welcome home, my lord. 
Bass. 1 thank you, madam. Give welcome to my friend. 
This is the man, this is Antonio, 
To whom I am so infinitely bound. 
Por. You should in all sense be much bound to him, 
For, as I hear, he was much bound for you. 
Ant. No more than I am well acquitted of. 
Por. Sir, you are very welcome to our house: 
It must appear in other ways than words, 140 
Therefore I scant this breathing courtesy. 
Gra. [To Ner.| By yonder moon I swear you do me wrong; 
In faith, I gave it to the judge’s clerk. 
Por. A quarrel, ho, already! what’s the matter? 
Gra. About a hoop of gold, a paltry ring 
That she did give me, whose posy was 
For all the world like cutler’s poetry 
Upon a knife, ‘ Love me, and leave me not’. 
Wer. What talk you of the posy or the value? 
You swore to me, when I did give it you, 150 


60 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act V. 


That you would wear it till your hour of death 
And that it should lie with you in your grave: 
Though not for me, yet for your vehement oaths, 
You should have been respective and have kept it. 
Gave it a judge’s clerk! no, God’s my judge, 
The clerk will ne’er wear hair on’s face that had it. 
Gra. He will, an if he live to be a man. 
Ver. Ay, if a woman live to be a man. 
Gra. Now, by this hand, I gave it to a youth, 
A kind of boy, a little scrubbed boy, 160 
No higher than thyself, the judge’s clerk, 
A prating boy, that begg’d it as a fee: 
I could not for my heart deny it him. 
Por. You were to blame, I must be plain with you, 
To part so slightly with your wife’s first gift ; 
A thing stuck on with oaths upon your finger 
And riveted with faith unto your flesh. 
I gave my love a ring and made him swear 
Never to part with it; and here he stands; 
I dare be sworn for him he would not leave it 179 
Nor pluck it from his finger, for the wealth 
That the world masters. Now, in faith, Gratiano, 
You give your wife too unkind a cause of grief: 
An ’t were to me, I should be mad at it. 
Bass. [Aside] Why, I were best to cut my left hand off 
And swear I lost the ring defending it. 
Gra. My Lord Bassanio gave his ring away 
Unto the judge that begg’d it and indeed 
Deserved it too; and then the boy, his clerk, 
That took some pains in writing, he begg’d mine; 180 
And neither man nor master would take aught 
But the two rings. 
Por. What ring gave you, my lord? 
Not that, I hope, which you received of me. 
Bass. If I could add a lie unto a fault, 
I would deny it; but you see my finger 
Hath not the ring upon it; it is gone. 
Por. Even so void is your false heart of truth. 


Bass. Sweet Portia, 
If you did know to whom I gave the ring, 
If you did know for whom I gave the ring, 190 


And would conceive for what I gave the ring 
And how unwillingly I left the ring, 

When nought would be accepted but the ring, 
You would abate the strength of your displeasure. 


4 


Scene z.] | THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 61 


Por. If you had known the virtue of the ring, 
Or half her worthiness that gave the ring, 
Or your own honour to contain the ring, 
You would not then have parted with the ring. 
What man is there so much unreasonable, 
If you had pleased to have defended it 200 
With any terms of zeal, wanted the modesty 
To urge the thing held as a ceremony? 
Nerissa teaches me what to believe: 
Ill die for’t but some woman had the ring. 
Bass. No, by my honour, madam, by my soul, 
No woman had it, but a civil doctor, 
Which did refuse three thousand ducats of me 
And begg’d the ring; the which I did deny him 
And suffer’d him to go displeased away ; 
Even he that did uphold the very life 210 
Of my dear friend. What should I say, sweet lady? 
I was enforced to send it after him; 
I was beset with shame and courtesy; 
My honour would not let ingratitude 
So much besmear it. Pardon me, good lady; 
For, by these blessed candles of the night, 
Had you been there, I think you would have begg’d 
The ring of me to give the worthy doctor. 
Por. Let not that doctor e’er come near my house: 
Since he hath got the jewel that I loved, 220 
And that which you did swear to keep for me, 
I will become as liberal as you; 
I’ll not deny him anything I have. 
Ant. 1 am the unhappy subject of these quarrels. 
Por. Sir, grieve not you; you are welcome notwithstanding. 
Bass. Portia, forgive me this enforced wrong ; 
And, in the hearing of these many friends, 
I swear to thee, even by thine own fair eyes, 
Wherein I see myself— 
Por. Mark you but that! 
In both my eyes he doubly sees himself; 230 
In each eye, one: swear by your double self, 
And there’s an oath of credit. 
Bass. Nay, but hear me: 
Pardon this fault, and by my soul I swear 
I never more will break an oath with thee. 
Ant. I once did lend my body for his wealth ; 
Which, but for him that had your husband’s ring, 
Had quite miscarried: I dare be bound again, 
(M330) a 


62 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act V.Sc.1. 


My soul upon the forfeit, that your lord 
Will never more break faith advisedly. 
Por. Then you shall be his surety. Give him this 240 
And bid him keep it better than the other. 
Ant. Here, Lord Bassanio; swear to keep this ring. 
Bass. By heaven, it is the same I gave the doctor! 
Por. \had it of him. You are all amazd: 
. Here is a letter; read it at your leisure; 
It comes from Padua, from Bellario: 
There you shall find that Portia was the doctor, 
Nerissa there her clerk: Lorenzo here 
Shall witness I set forth as soon as you 
And even but now return’d; I have not yet 250 
Enter’d my house. Antonio, you are welcome ; 
And I have better news in store for you 
Than you expect: unseal this letter soon; 
There you shall find three of your argosies 
Are richly come to harbour suddenly: 
You shall not know by what strange accident 
I chanced on this letter. 
Ant. I am dumb. 
Bass. Were you the doctor and I knew you not? 
Ant. Sweet lady you have given me life and living; 
For here I read for certain that my ships 2 
Are safely come to road. 
Por. How now, Lorenzo! 
My clerk hath some good comforts too for you. 
er. Ay, and I’ll give them him without a fee. 
There do I give to you and Jessica, 
From the rich Jew, a special deed of gift, 
After his death, of all he dies possess’d of. 
Lor. Fair ladies, you drop manna in the way 
Of starved people. 
Por. It is almost morning, 
And yet I am sure you are not satisfied 
Of these events at full. Let us go in; 270 
And charge us there upon inter’gatories, 
And we will answer all things faithfully. 
Gra. Well, while I live I’ll fear no other thing 
So sore as keeping safe Nerissa’s ring. [Exeunt, 


NOTES. 


Act I.—Scene I. 


How Bassanio, a scholar and a soldter, tells the merchant, Antonio, 
of hts purpose to win Portia, the heiress of Belmont; and how Antonto 
undertakes to find the money to fit out a ship for him. 


The early scenes of Shakespeare’s plays serve both to introduce 
the foremost persons of the action, and to give a foretaste of the kind 
of tale that is to follow. Fine instances of his art in ‘ overture’ are 
the beginnings of Hamlet and Macbeth. 

Here, we begin by making the acquaintance of the Merchant of 
Venice himself and of two of his friends, who appear to be courtiers 
or soldiers. Antonio is out of spirits, and his melancholy is ominous— 


‘* By a divine instinct men’s minds mistrust 
Ensuing dangers” (Azchard [/1., ii. 3. 42). 


His anxious words, together with the description by the others of a 
merchant’s risks, suggest the coming trouble. At the same time 
their solicitude and kindness are prompted by a touch of the same 
loyal friendship by which that trouble is to be remedied. 

Later, we are also introduced to Bassanio and certain of his com- 
panions. Immediately upon this the threefold action of the plot 
begins with Bassanio’s story of his hopes of Portia, with Lorenzo’s 
agreement to meet Bassanio ‘after dinner’, and with Antonio’s 
promise to raise money. 


8. Scan this line, and note the word which has a different 
pronunciation from the modern. Compare ‘obscure’, ii. 7. 51, 
‘aspéct’, ii, 1. 8. 

13. The little ships feel the motion of the waves, and seem to bob 
and curtsy to the big, steady galleys of Antonio. 


15. had I such venture forth. Put this expression along with 
i. I. 143, ‘‘to find the other forth”, and ii. 5. 11, ‘‘I am bid forth 
to supper ”, and explain the meaning of the adverb. 


16. affections in Shakespeare’s time had a wider sense than in 
modern English, and included all feelings or emotions; so also in 


iv. I. 49. 


64. ‘THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. [Act I. 


18, sits. The wind is said to ‘sit’ in the quarter towards which 
it blows. So in Much Ado About Nothing, ii. 3. 102, ‘‘ sits the 
wind in that corner?” 

1g. roads, parts of the sea where a ship may safely ‘ride’ at 
anchor. 

28. Andrew, a name for a galley. It is not known whether 
Shakespeare had any particular ship in mind. 

32. touching but, merely touching. There is a similar order of 
words in line 153 of this scene, and in iv. I. 272, ‘‘repent but you”. 

50. two-headed Janus, the god of gates and doors, who there- 
fore was figured ‘facing both ways’, and so is a type of opposite 
extremes united in a single nature. . 

52. peep through their eyes, z.¢. their eyes are ‘screwed up’, 
as their faces wrinkle with laughter. 

56. Nestor, a proverb for age and gravity. He lived through 
three generations, and in the third fought with the Greeks against 
the Trojans. 

61. prevented, anticipated; compare the derivation of the verb. 

70. dinner-time, z.e. about eleven a.m. Compare the passage 
in A Description of England by William Harrison, an elder contem- 
porary of Shakespeare’s (p. 105 in Z/izabethan England, ed. Furni- 
vall, in the Camelot Series), ‘With us the nobility, gentry, and 
students do ordinarily go to dinner at e/even before noon”. 

71. where we must meet. Lorenzo is already laying his plans 
to run off with Jessica, with the help of Bassanio. 

74. 2€ you take the world more seriously than it is worth, and 
‘lose’ it by losing the power to enjoy it. So Robert Louis Steven- 
son, after Thoreau: ‘‘A man may pay too dearly for his livelihood 
by giving his whole life for it”. 

977. At its second occurrence in the line, ‘world’ must be read 
with a different intonation, and be understood with a different mean- 
ing: 

i ‘TI take the world, but as the wor/d’. 

A fuller emphasis gives quite another colour to a word, as in— 


** Love is not love 
Which alters where it alteration finds”, 
or 
‘Tf it were done, when ’t is done, then ’t were well 
It were done quickly”. 

78. [In what other places does Shakespeare compare life to acting 
in a play?] 

79. Rosalind says much the same: ‘‘I had rather have a fool to 
make me merry than experience to make me sad”, 

In this passage ‘‘ play the fool” means ‘act the part of clown’. 

80. old wrinkles, 7.¢. such as old age produces. 


Scene 1.] NOTES. iL 65 | 


84. his grandsire cut in alabaster, that is, like an effigy ona 
tomb. Alabaster tombs of Elizabethan times may be seen in many 
churches. There is a noble example of one at Mytton Church in 
Yorkshire. 

90. entertain, we should now say ‘maintain’. Schmidt quotes 
*‘here we entertain a solemn peace” from the first part of Henry VZ. 

gi. opinion of wisdom =‘ reputation for wisdom’. 

92. conceit has its original meaning of ‘something conceived’, a 
‘thought’ or ‘fancy’. See note on ili. 4. 2. 

99. Expand the phrase from the condensed form in which it 
appears in the text. What passage of the New Testament is 
referred to? 

ror, Gratiano accuses Antonio of putting on an appearance of 
melancholy to establish his reputation for wisdom. There is a 
curiously exact parallel in Howell’s Zustructions for Forreine Travell 
(first published 1642, reprinted by Arber), ‘‘The Italians are for the 
most part of a speculative complexion [#.¢. disposition], and he is 
accounted little lesse than a foole who is not melancholy once a day”. 

102. this fool gudgeon, a greedy and stupid fish, easily caught, 
because it will swallow any bait, and not worth the trouble when 
you have caught it. 

108. moe, a different word from ‘more’, and—in old English— 
differently used. ‘Mo’ or ‘moe’ was used of number, ‘more’ of 
size; ‘mo’ was the comparative used for the positive ‘many’, ‘more’ 
for ‘mickle’ or ‘much’. Vide Skeat’s Ztymological Dictionary of 
the English Language, s.v. ‘more’. 

124, something, used adverbially = ‘ somewhat’, as in line 129. 

port=style of living. How does the word come to have this 
meaning? What other English words contain, the same metaphor? 

126. make moan to be abridged, means ‘complain of being 
cut down’, Cf. note on line 150. 

137. to stand within the eye of honour, means ‘to be within 
honour’s range’. How would you expand the metaphor contained 
in this phrase into a simile? 

140. school-days. It is amusing to put together some of the 
passages in which Shakespeare speaks of school-days and school-boys: 
e.g. Two Gentlemen of Verona, ii. 1. 21, ‘‘to sigh like a schoolboy 
that hath lost his ABC”; Much Ado About Nothing, ii. 1. 229, ‘‘ the 
flat transgression of a schoolboy, who being overjoyed with finding 
a bird’s nest, shows it his companion and he steals it”; Romeo and 
Juliet, ii. 2. 156: 

‘* Love goes toward love, as schoolboys from their books, 
But love from love, toward school with heavy looks”; 
and, best known ofall, As You Like Jt, ii. 7. 145: 
«* And then the whining schoolboy with his satchel 
And shining morning face, creeping like snail 
Unwillingly to school”. 


66 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. [Act I. 


In The Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. 1., a lad named William, who 
is being taken to school by his mother, is met in the street by the 
schoolmaster and made to say his ‘ Hic, haec, hoc’ then and there. 
The whole passage is very curious, and reads like a reminiscence of 
Shakespeare’s own boyhood. 


141. of the self-same flight, z.¢. feathered and weighted for the 
same distance. 


144. =‘I put forward this experience of my boyhood, because of 
the simplicity of what follows.’ 
For this sense of ‘ proof’ compare /wlius Cesar, ii. 1. 21: 


“Tt is a common proof 
That lowliness is young ambition’s ladder”. 


150. =‘I have no doubt, from the way in which I mean to watch 
the aim, that I shall either find both or’, &c. 

In Shakespearean English ‘to’ with the verb is used in many 
senses where nowadays we should either use other prepositions, or 
else a conjunction with a dependent clause. See line 126 above, and 
154 below. 


153, 154. =‘ You only waste time by approaching your friend in 
roundabout fashion.’ 


166. Cato’s daughter, Brutus’ Portia, a clear reference to Sir 
Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Life of Brutus, wherein 
Porcia says: ‘‘I am the daughter of Cato, and wife of Brutus”. 

It is interesting to see that, some four or five years before the 
Heieed Cesar was written, Shakespeare had this heroine already in 

is mind. Bassanio’s Portia had several of her namesake’s qualities, 
as Plutarch describes them: ‘‘ This young Ladie being excellently 
well seen in Philosophie, louing her husband well, and being of a 
noble courage, as she was also wise”, &c. 

The zame Porcia is the feminine form of the ‘ gentilician’ name 
of M. Porcius Cato, retained by his daughter, in Roman fashion, 
after marriage. 

The spelling Portia is due to the common sixteenth-century substi- 
tution of -¢z- for -ci- in the endings of Latin words. [Sir Thomas 
North spelt it with a c.] 


171. Colchos, more accurately Co/chis, a country at the eastern 
end of the Black Sea, whither Jason went in quest of the Golden 
Fleece. See note on ili. 2. 238. 

175. I have a mind presages me such thrift. We should 
insert the relative pronoun before ‘ presages’. In modern English 
we omit the relative only when it would be, if expressed, in the 
objective case, as, e.g.: ‘I cannot find the book I was reading 
yesterday’. 

Take care to put the accent on the right syllable in ‘ presages’. 
Scan the line. Under what general rule does the pronunciation of 
the word come? 


Scene 2.] NOTES. 67 


Scene 2. 


How Portia, the Lady of Belmont, declares her resolution to marry 
none but the man who should win her in the manner of her father’s 
will; how she speaks of Bassanio; of the departure of certain suitors, 
and the coming of the Prince of Morocco. 


This scene does something more than show us some of Portia’s 
qualities, her insight into men, her wit, and her loyalty to her father’s 
wishes. It shows that the conditions of the ‘lottery’ are such as to 
frighten away the fainter-hearted among her suitors, and to constitute 
some test of true love; and further, that she has already seen in a 
poor ‘scholar and soldier’ from Venice, who had visited Belmont 
in the train of the Marquis of Montferrat, the man whom she would 
prefer above all others. 

For the dress in which we are to imagine Portia, see Godwin in 
Furness’ Variorum Edition, p. 387: ‘‘ Portia would do her shopping 
probably at Padua, and would therefore follow the fashions of the 
mainland”, But any sixteenth-century picture of an Italian lady 
would be near enough. 


1. Portia’s opening words recall Antonio’s, She is not entirely at 
ease, though for a different reason. 


7. There is a play here between two words, spelt and sounded 
alike, but of different sense and origin. ‘Mean’, in the phrase ‘it 
is no mean happiness’=trivial or contemptible, and is derived from 
A.S. ‘maene’, wicked. ‘Mean’, in the phrase ‘to be seated in the 
mean’, = middle or moderate, between two extremes, and comes 
from the French ‘moyen’, the Lat. ‘ medianus’. 

’ In line 21 there is a play of another kind, namely, on two different 
meanings of the same word, ‘will’, as again in v. I. 135, 136, on two 
meanings of * bound’, 

Such ‘ puns’, or plays on words, have nowadays associations with 
pantomime or farce; but in Queen Elizabeth’s time were often used 
quite seriously (even ‘in real life’), as if the similarity in word or phrase 
pointed to some analogy in the things themselves. For a serious use 
of a pun, in this play, compare Antonio’s words in what he thought 
was his dying speech: 

‘* And, if the Jew do cut but deep enough, 
I’ll pay it presently, wzth all my heart”. 


11. chapels had been churches, #.¢, small churches would 
have been large ones. The distinction between achapel and a 
church originally was that a chapel had no parish belonging to it, 
while a church had. 


17. Such a hare is madness the youth, to skip o’er the 
meshes of good counsel the cripple. Draw the emblem sug- 
ested by the words, and see if it is not an admirable ie of the 
idea. ow many such ‘ picture-phrases’ there are in Shakespeare’s 


63 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. [Act I 


poetry! Here are one or two instances to start a collection with: 
‘Pity’ is a ‘naked new-born babe’ (Jacbeth). ‘‘ This drivelling 
Love is like a great natural, that runs lolling up and down to hide 
his bauble in a hole” (Romeo and Juliet, i. 4. 95). ‘* Wither’d 
Murder, alarum’d by his sentinel, the wolf” (Macbeth). 

38. County Palatine. ‘County’ for ‘Count’, as often in Shake- 
speare (‘ Princes and Counties’, JZuch Ado About ‘ Nothing, i iv. I. 317). 
A ‘Count Palatine’ was a count holding office in the palace of king 
or emperor, with almost royal prerogatives in his own ‘fief’ or 
territory. There were three such in England: the Duke of Lancaster, 
the Earl of Chester, and the Bishop of Durham. In Germany the 
title had at first a general meaning, as above (‘ palatine’ is the same 
word as ‘ paladin’), but was afterwards applied particularly to the 
Lords of the ‘ Palatinate’ on the western bank of the Upper Rhine. 


40. If you will not have me, choose. Apparently something 
is omitted after ‘choose’, which Portia expresses by a gesture, Per- 
haps the phrase means, choose your weapon, as fora duel. His frown 
conveys a threat. 

42. weeping philosopher, a name traditionally given to Hera- 


clitus, in contrast to the ‘laugher’, Democritus. 


52. a capering. ‘a’ in such phrases is another form of the 


preposition ‘on’. (Cf. abed, alive, afoot.) 

60. Latin was still a ‘living language’, in the sense of a com- 
mon means of communication, in Shakespeare’s time,—a relic of 
the days of the Roman dominion in Western Europe, when. Latin 
was everywhere the language of church and state. Two generations 
later than Shakespeare, when Milton was Cromwell’s secretary, 
Latin was still used in state despatches to foreign courts, and, even 
later still, was used by George I. to converse with Walpole. 

62. proper=handsome, as in Authorized Version of Hebrews xi. 
23: ‘* By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of 
his parents, because they saw he was a proger child”. 

64. doublet, a garment fitting close to the body from the neck to 
the waist; round hose, clothes that went from the waist to the 
knees, called ‘round’, because puffed, so as to be globe-like in 
shape. 

67. Scottish lord. Altered from the reading in the text, which 
is that of the 1600 editions, to ‘‘other lord” in the First Folio (1623). 
What had happened meanwhile in English History to make the 
alteration a politic one? 

7o. Frenchman; referring to the frequent alliances between 
France and Scotland against England. Sealed under, z.¢. put his 
seal below the Scotchman’s, as his surety. 

83. Rhenish wine, a white wine like the modern Hock, exown 
in the valley of the Rhine. 

git. imposition, conditions laid down. 


Scene 3.] NOTES. 69 


92. Sibylla. The Sibyl is used here as a proverbial type of old 
age in woman, as Nestor in scene I. for old age and gravity in man. 
Stories are told of various sibyls or prophetesses, but the most 
famous by far was the Sibyl of Cumz, who guided Atneas to the 
under world, and afterwards sold her three books to the Roman 
king for the same price as that for which she had at first offered nine. 
She obtained as a boon from Apollo the power to live for as many 
years as she could hold grains of dust in her hand. 


97. in your father’s time, seems to imply he had been dead 
some little while, and strengthens the general impression produced 
by the play that Portia is older than most of the heroines of Shake- 
speare. The Marquises of Montferrat were famous in Italy for 
centuries. Dante saw one in purgatory: 

**the Marquis William, 
For whose sake Alessandria and her war 
Make Montferrat and Canavese weep”. 
—Ffurg. vii. 134, Longfellow’s trans, 


107. The four strangers. /our should be szx, to be consistent 
with the rest of the scene. The same mistake is made in both the 
Quartos of 1600 and also the First Folio, showing that they are not 
independent authorities for the text. [Compare a similar blunder, 
made by all the early editions, in v. I. 49, where ‘‘Sweet soul” is— 
in spite of sense and metre—given to the clown instead of Lorenzo. ] 
This mistake can hardly be taken as a safe ground for believing that 
a revision was made by the author, and two other characters added 
to an original four. It is only one more instance of inattention to 
*minutize ’, on the part of editors and printers. 


Scene 3. 


How the Merchant of Venice, who had reviled Shylock the Jew 
tor taking interest on loans, ts obliged to ask him for money, with 
which to equip Bassanio for Belmont. How Shylock agrees to lend 
it, without interest, on forfeit of a pound of the Merchant’s flesh. 


No more striking proof of the range of Shakespeare’s power could 
be given than the transition from the previous scene to this, from 
Portia to Shylock. Each picture is superb, but together they pro- 
duce the strongest possible effect. Note particularly in this scene 
the touches by which we are made to feel Shylock’s intellectual force, 
and his stiff-necked tenacity of will. The constant reference to 
Palestine and Scripture, to Rebekah and Jacob, to the publicans, to 
the temptation and miracles of Christ, seems to charge the lines with 
recollections of Jewish history, and of the events which both joined 
and severed Christianity and Judaism. But how these ‘abstractions’ 
are living flesh and blood in Shakespeare’s Jew! 

The ‘get up’ of Edwin Booth, the famous American actor (quoted, 
from his own MS., on page 387 of Furness’ Variorum Edition), may 


70 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. {Act I. 


help to call up the detail of the picture. ‘* My costume for Shylock 
was suggested by one of a group of Oriental figures in a picture by 
Géréme. It consists of a long, dark-green gown, trimmed at the 
edge of the skirt with an irregular device of brown colour. A dark. 
brown gaberdine, with flowing sleeves and hood, lined with green, 
and trimmed as the gown. A variegated scarf about the waist, from 
which depends a leather pouch. Red-leather pointed shoes, and 
hat of orange-tawny colour. . . . Head gray and pretty bald; beard 
of same colour and quite long. LEar-rings and several finger- rings, 
one on the thumb and one on the fore-finger; a long knotted staff. 
Complexion swarthy; age about sixty.” 


Ir. a good man, 2z.e. of substantial or adequate means, commer- 
cially sound. Bassanio takes the word in the ordinary sense, and 
misunderstands Shylock. Its use in commerce is akin to its use in 
law, as when we speak of ‘a good title’, ‘a good claim’, or con- 
trariwise, ‘a dad document’. 


15. in supposition, z.e. dependent on conditions, and not actu- 
ally in hand. 

bound to Tripolis. The word dound here has no connection 

by derivation with the word in line 4 above, ‘‘ Antonio shall be 

bound”. Applied to ships it means ‘ready to go’, ‘fit for sea’, and 

was in Middle English spelt ‘bown’, or ‘boun’, the final ‘d’ is an 

‘excrescence’. There is a fine use of the word in Sommet lxxxvi.— 


‘* Was it the proud full sail of his great verse 
Bound for the prize of all too precious you 
That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse?” &c. 


In general, it means ‘prepared’, ‘ready’. Like the word with 
which it is confused, it is a past participle, but from an obsolete verb 
meaning to ‘till’ or ‘ prepare’, which also gives us the substantive 
‘boor’ or ‘ boer’=a farmer. 

Tripolis, zot the city in Barbary in N. Africa (as is clear from a 
comparison with iii. 2. 265 and 266), but the seaport in Syria, a little 
to the north-east of Beyrout. The African Tripolis was chiefly 
famous for its pirates, though there was some little trade with it in 
oil (for which see a curious tract, by one Thomas Sanders, called 
The Unfortunate Voyage of the Jesus to Tripoli in 1584, reprinted in 
vol. ii. of Arber’s English Garner, where illustrations in plenty may 
be found of the risks which Shylock speaks of here), The Aszatec 
Tripolis was on the way from Venice to the East, by the ‘Euphrates 
valley route’. It was a famous port in Crusading times, and traded 
with Venice in glass. 

16. the Indies, z.e. the American Indies, as in Maria’s famous 
simile in Twelfth Night, iii. 2. 85: ‘‘He does smile his face into 
more lines than is in the new map with the augmentation of the 
Indies”. 

17. The Rialto, the great meeting-place or ‘exchange’ of mer- 


Scene 3.] NOTES. 71 


chants, or a bridge connecting the island named ‘ Rialto’ with the 
St. Mark’s quarter.of Venice. 


18, England. Throughout the fifteenth, and in the early years 
of the sixteenth centuries, a fleet sailed yearly from Venice for 
Flanders and England, But this had ceased in the reign of Eliza- 
beth. 


21. Pirates. The Barbary pirates were a terror in the Mediter- 
ranean down to the bombardment of Algiers by Lord Exmouth in 
1816, 


25. Shylock refuses to be ‘assured’ in the conventional sense, and 
will make certain by his own inquiries. His answer is as charac- 
teristic of 42s keenness, as Bassanio’s invitation of the Jew to dinner 
is consistent with zs light-hearted ways of doing business, 


29. Nazarite, for Nazarene, or inhabitant of Nazareth. So in all 
translations of the Bible down to the Authorized Version of 1611 
(see note in Furness’ Variorum Edition). 


32. Who is he comes here? For omission of the relative, see 
note on i. I. 175. 


35- a fawning publican. It is the warmth of the greeting 
which Antonio gives to Bassanio that suggests the adjective (compare 
the lively feeling he shows at Bassanio’s departure, ii. 8. 48). The 
amiability of Antonio stirs Shylock’s gall. (So again in iii. 1. 38, 
**He that was used to come so smug upon the mart”.) As to the 
substantive, Shylock identifies himself with the Pharisee’s contempt 
for the humble-minded publican in the parable. Or is he thinking 
of Zacchzeus, the publican who gave half his goods to the poor? 
The word, with all its associations, by a single touch suggests a 
whole lifetime of hatred for the religion of people who would ‘‘ eat 
with publicans and sinners”. [References to the New Testament: 
would not be likely in the mouth of a Jew. But they are none the 
less vividly suggestive to the audience. Compare for Shakespeare’s 
method in this respect the note on ili. 2. 275. ] 


40. upon the hip, a metaphor from a wrestling-bout. 


53. rest you fair. Shylock had stepped aside when Antonio 
entered and greeted Bassanio. He pretends to have caught sight of 
him now for the first time. 

The phrase ‘rest you fair’ Schmidt explains by supposing ‘God’ 
to be understood as subject to ‘rest’, as in ‘God rest you merry’, 4s 
You Like It, v. 1. 65, where ‘rest’ has the sense of ‘keep’. 


56, excess, z.¢. anything over and abave the principal. 
57. ripe wants, 7z.¢. wants that will not bear delay. 


75. pilled me certain wands. ‘Me’ is idiomatic in phrases of 
this sort, and has the expletive or demonstrative force of such ex- 
pressions as ‘ you know’, ‘look you’, ‘I'll trouble you’, &c. Com- 
pare Macbeth, ili. 6. 41, and Julius Cesar, i. 2. 267. 


72 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. [Act I.Sc.3. 


88. Another of the many references to the Bible in this play. 
When was it that the devil ‘cited Scripture for his purpose’? 


92. oh what a goodly outside falsehood hath, much what 
Bassanio says in declining the golden casket (iii. 2. 98). 


95. beholding, a corruption of ‘beholden’, the past partic. of 
the verb ‘behold’ in the sense of ‘to guard’ or ‘keep’, and, meta- 
phorically, ‘to bind’ or ‘oblige’ (like German Jdehalten). Other 
instances of the confusion between -ing and -en are quoted by 
Abbott, Shakespearian Grammar, § 372. 


Iog. ‘moneys’ is your suit=the object of your petition is 
moneys. The word is quoted again, in contempt, from Antonio’s 
request. It is guoted, and hence the singular verb with it. Or 
perhaps ‘moneys’ may be regarded as a collective, on the false 
analogy of ‘riches’ (which is a true singular, from French ‘richesse’). 
In support of this compare ‘‘thus much moneys” in line 119 below. 

There are abundant traces, however, of an Early English third 
person plural inflection in -s still surviving in Elizabethan English, 
é.g. line 150 below: 


‘Whose own hard dealings teaches them suspect”, 
and Richard I71,, ii. 3. 4, 5: 


**These high wild hills and rough uneven ways 
Draws out our miles, and makes them wearisome”. 


(See Abbott, Shakespearitan Grammar, § 333-) 


124. The superstitious prejudice against the taking of interest 
arose from a confusion between loans made in charity or friendship 
and loans made as a matter of business. The prejudice took the 
form sometimes of a religious prohibition, sometimes of an argu- 
mentative attack. It is curious that Aristotle, who founded the 
scientific treatment of wealth by his exposition of the true nature of 
money, as a medium of exchange, also lent his authority to the 
quibble that because metal has no natural power of increase, therefore 
interest is against nature, as if it were mere metal and not power to 
acquire commodities which the borrower seeks from his creditor. 


126. who, if he break. The ‘who’ and ‘he’ are to be taken in 
close connection with one another as making a compound subject 
to ‘break’ (=qui si fidem fefellerit). For similar instances of the 
relative with supplementary pronoun, see Abbott, Shakespearian 
Grammar, § 249, where, however, a different explanation of this 
passage is given. 

134. your single bond, z.e. your bond without any other person 
as security. This proposal seems a concession on Shylock’s part, but 
it is meant to assist his plan for vengeance, since it leaves no second 
security to be called in in case of Antonio’s failure. 


138. equal pound, exact pound. 
150. dealings teaches, see on line 109 above. 


Act II. Scene 1.] NOTES. 73 


155. estimable. We should apply the word nowadays only to 
persons, but in Ehzabethan English its use was less restricted. Com- 
pare ‘ varnished’, which we now only use of things, applied to persons 
in ii. 5. 32, and ii. 9. 49. 

156. muttons, beefs=French ‘moutons, bceufs’. The dis- 
tinction between ‘sheep’ and ‘ox’, on one side, as living animals, 
and ‘mutton’ and ‘ beef’, on the other, as the same animals brought 
to table, had not become fixed in Shakespeare’s time, whatever be 
said in the famous passage at the opening of Scott’s /vanhoe. 


159. =‘ Andas for my good-will, I beg you not to hurt me by your 
suspicions.’ 

164. fearful guard, insecure, risky, or perilous guard. ‘ Fearful’ 
used to mean ‘ causing fear for’ as well as ‘ causing fear of”. 


Act |l.—Scene I. 


How the Prince of Morocco would undertake the adventure of the 
caskets, and what the Lady of Belmont said to him. 


The stage-direction in the First Folio edition begins ‘‘ Enter 
Morochus a tawnie Moore all in white, and three or foure followers 
accordingly”. The picture of the Moorish prince and his train, 


‘* Dusk faces with white silken turbans wreath’d ”, 


encountering Portia is one of the most striking in the whole of the 
play. The Moorish chivalry had been, in arts and arms, a match for 
Christendom, and the romance of the Middle Ages is full of such 
tales as: 
‘When Agrican with all his northern powers 

Besieged Albracca, as romances tell; 

The city of Gallaphrone, from thence to win 

The fairest of her sex, Angelica, 

His daughter, sought by many prowest knights, 

Both Faynim and the peers of Charlemain” ; 


or of those who 
‘baptized or zzjfidel 
Jousted in Aspramont or Montalban, 
Damasco or Morocco, or Trebisond 
Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore 
When Charlemain with all his peerage fell 
By Fontarabia”. . 


The Mahometan warriors were still a peril to Europe in Shake- 
speare’s time. Lepanto, where the author of Don Quzxote lost an 
arm, was fought in 1571. 

This Moorish prince, with his gallantry, passionate feeling, and 
boyish simplicity, suggests an early study of Moorish character, 
afterwards worked out in the ‘ Moor of Venice’. His words have a 
fine rolling rhythm, his style a Southern gaudiness of colour. 


74 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. [Act II. 


7. Red blood, as Johnson pointed out, was thought a sign of 
courage, while cowards ‘‘ have livers white as milk” (below, ii. 2. 
86). 

g. fear’d=frightened. The verb ‘fear’ commonly had this transi- 
tive force in Old English, and often in Shakespeare, e.g. Henry V., 
i, 2. 155: 

“* She hath been, then, more /ear’d than harm’d, my liege”. 


24. scimitar. Like Othello’s famous sword, 


“*a better never did itself sustain 
Upon a soldier’s thigh” ( Othello, v. 2. 260). 


25. The Sophy, z.e. the Shah of Persia. The Persians were 
famous swordsmen; cf. 7welfth Night, iii. 4. 307, ‘She has been 
fencer to the Sophy”. 

26. Sultan Solyman, called the ‘Magnificent’, was the tenth 
Ottoman Sultan, and reigned from 1520 to 1566. He took Belgrade 
and Rhodes from the Christians, but failed to capture Vienna. He 
also suffered defeat in Persia about 1534. 

32. Lichas, the squire or attendant of Hercules, Ovid’s Meta- 
morphoses, ix. Alcides= Hercules, from the fact that Alcseus was 
his grandfather. 

33. =(to decide) ‘which is the better man’. 


35. Page, one of Theobald’s ‘emendations’, Quartos and 
Folios have ‘ Rage’. 

43. Nor will not, emphatic double negative=‘ No more I will’ 
(speak to lady afterward, &c.). 

Scan line 43. 

44. the temple where the oath to observe the conditions was to 
be taken. 

46. blest or cursed’st. The superlative termination to one 
adjective does duty for both, as below, ili. 2. 290— 

“ The best condition’d and unwearied spirit”, 


and Measure for Measure, iv. 6. 13— 


‘‘ The generous and gravest citizens”. 
(See Abbott, Shaksp. Gr., § 398.) 


Scene 2. 


How Launcelot Gobbo leaves his master, Shylock, to take service 
under Bassanio, and how Gratiano obtains Bassanto’s leave to go 
with him to Belmont. 


We must suppose some days to have elapsed since the bond was 
sealed. Meanwhile Bassanio has bought or hired a ship for his enter 
prise, and is engaged in hiring and clothing a retinue of followers. 


Scene 2.] NOTES. 75 


Launcelot Gobbo is the ‘clown’ of the piece. He is a country 
lad, son of a small farmer, who has a horse called Dobbin, and keeps 
pigeons. Occasionally the old man comes into Venice to see how 
his boy is getting on in town-service. Thus Launcelot is not a pro- 
fessional jester like the Fools in Azug Lear, Twelfth Night, and As 
You Like It, but a servant by trade, and a wag by humour. His 
country appetite and power of sleeping, his untiring spirits and broad 
outspokenness prove him a ‘clown’ compared to the courtly attend- 
ants of Portia. 


1. It looks as if there should be a ‘not’ before ‘serve’, (Halli- 
well.) 


14. grow to, a ‘country phrase’, applied originally to milk 
which, in cooking, has been burnt to the bottom of the saucepan, 
and so has acquired a taste. (See note in Furness’ Variorum 
Edition. ) 

21. saving your reverence=salva reverentia, z.¢. if I may say 
so without offence. 


22. incarnal. Launcelot has not got quite the right word here. 
Compare ‘confusions’ in 31, ‘frutify’ in 120, and ‘impertinent’ in 
123. His father has an equal difficulty with words from the Latin, 
such as ‘infection’ and ‘defect’. ‘ Malapropisms’ of this sort were 
particularly rife in Shakespeare’s time, when new words from other 
languages, especially Latin, were pouring into the vocabulary of 
English. Launcelot’s learning, like Ancient Pistol’s, smacks of the 
playhouse, as in his reference to the Sisters Three, to Fortune a 
woman, and his use of ‘ via’ for away, and ‘ ergo’ for therefore. 


30. sand-blind, lit. half-blind (O.E. sdm-blind); but the first 
syllable was already in Shakespeare’s time misinterpreted, as Launce- 
lot’s pun shows. Capell’s note on the word is: ‘That is, purblind’; 
a vulgar phrase for it, as stone-blind is for those who are quite so; 
Launcelot finds a ‘blind’ between these, which he calls ‘ gravel- 
blind’. 

46. well to live, according to Furness means ‘ with every pros- 
pect of a long life’. But it seems better to take it as=‘ well off’, 
and then the phrase is an absurdity of the Dogberry stamp (‘‘ You 
are thought here to be the most senseless and fit man for the con- 
stable of the watch”, &c.). Old Gobbo utters just such another in 
line 63 below. 


49. The father refuses to give his son the title ‘Master’, which 
the son continually repeats with increased emphasis. 


83. what a beard hast thou got. The traditional stage 
‘business’ here is that Launcelot should kneel down and present 
the dack of his head to his father, who takes the long, thick hair for 
a beard. 

87. hair of his tail. A comparison of Launcelot’s words with 
Old Gobbo’s shows that ‘of’? has much the same sense as ‘on’ here. 


76 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. [Act II. 


Abbott (Shakespearian Grammar, § 175) quotes Zaming of Shrew: 
iv. I. 7I— 
“*My master riding behind my mistress— 
Both of one horse”. 


The gradual change from Shakespeare’s English to ours is nowhere 
more clearly marked than in the uses of prepositions. The student 
should collect instances for himself of cases where prepositions are 
employed otherwise than they would be in modern English. 

For ‘of’ compare line 67 above, ‘‘ you might fail of the knowing 
me”, with ix. 11, and 


** We have not spoke as yet of torchbearers”, ii. 4. 5 and 23. 
**T have no mind of feasting forth to-night”, ii. 5. 36. 

93. set up my rest to run away, to ‘set up a rest’ was a term 
in games of chance, and seems to have meant to make a wager over 
and above the ordinary stake, to ‘ back one’s chance’ heavily; and 
so to ‘plunge’ on something in a metaphorical sense, to put every- 
thing on a single resolve. 

Here there is a play on the two meanings of ‘rest’. It is an 
instance of the amazing range of Shakespeare’s power that the very 
same play on words is used with extraordinary effect in one of the 
saddest scenes in tragedy (written, perhaps, within a short time of 
the Merchant of Venice): 

**O here 
Will I set up my everlasting rest 
And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars 
From my world-wearied flesh”. 
(Romeo and Juliet, v. 3. 109.) 


97. give me your present to one Master Bassanio. For 
this use of ‘me’, cf. i. 3. 75, where, however, the meaning is not 
quite the same. Here it=‘for me’, or ‘please’, as in 


“* Heat me these irons hot” (King John, iv. 1. 1). 


too. to him, father, the verb of motion is often omitted in such 
phrases, especially in the imperative mood. So ‘‘ Father, in”, in line 
141, and in the infinitive mood, 


**T must to Coventry” (Richard JT/., i. 2. 56). 


[The idiom includes far more than an ellipsis after ‘will’ and ‘is’, 
as Abbott explains it in § 405 of his Grammar. ] 


103. supper...ready...by five of the clock. Elizabethan meals 
and meal-times were startingly unlike ours. ‘‘ The nobility, gentry, 
and students dined at eleven before noon, and supped between five 
and six. The merchant dined at twelve, and supped at six. Hus- 
bandmen dined at noon and supped at seven or eight. To take 
two meals only was the rule; none but the young, the sick, and very 
early risers were thought tc need odd repasts”. (Soczal England, 
ed. H. D. Traill, vel. iii. p. 392 of the 1895 edition, following the 
passage in Harrison, cited above, i. I. 70.) 


Scene 3.] NOTES. 77 


135. The old proverb, z.e. as Staunton pointed out, ‘‘ God’s 
grace is gear enough”. 
parted, z.e. divided. 


140. more guarded, with more facings or coloured stripes set 
across it, the mark of a jester; compare the description of a fool in 
line 16 of the prologue to Henry ViII.— 

<A fellow 
In a long motley coat guarded with yellow”. . 


143. table, a term of ‘chiromancy’, the magic art which foretells 
a person’s future from the lines on his hand. ‘Table’ means the 
palm of the hand extended. 

It is perhaps futile to expect to make exact grammar or sense out 
of the sentence beginning, ‘‘If any man in Italy have a fairer table”. 
The passage is ‘corrupt’, ze. we have not got the words as Shake- 
speare wrote them. I believe the sentence contains a reference, 
which the commentators have missed, to the custom of swearing 
with uplifted hand in a court of law. 

144. a simple line of life; ‘simple’ is sarcastic of course, ‘ line 
of life’ is the main line across the hand. 

152. During this talk between Launcelot and Old Gobbo, Bas- 
sanio and Leonardo have been conversing on one side. They now 
come forward. 

155. hie thee. The ‘thee’ is reflexively used. 

157. The respect which Bassanio’s friends have for him appears 
in the way in which they address him, ‘Signior Bassanio’ here. 
‘My Lord Bassanio’, i. 1. 69, &c. 

163. hear thee, Gratiano. In this case the ‘thee’ cannot be 
reflexive, as in 155 above. It stands for ‘thou’, as in such phrases 
as ‘fare thee well’, ‘look thee here’, ‘stand thee by’, &c. &c. 

In these instances, the pronoun /ol/owing the verb was, by a subtle 
form of false analogy, put in the accusative case, as Professor Jesper- 
sen explains in his Progress of Language. 

165. Parts, z.¢. qualities. 

168. liberal=‘ free’ to the point of ‘ taking liberties’, The word 
is coupled with ‘ profane’ in Othello, ii. 1. 165, and seems to mean 
* excessively free-spoken’ in Hamlet, iy. 7. 171. 

182. sad ostent, serious behaviour. 


Scene 8. 


Of a letter, which Jessica, the Jew’s daughter, sent to her lover, 
Lorenzo, by the hand of Launcelot Gobbo. 


to. exhibit. Launcelot has got hold of the wrong word again, 
See note on line 22 of preceding scene. 
17. manners included more in its Elizabethan use than it does 
(330) H 


78 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. {Act II. 


now, and embraced the big rules of life as well as the small ones,— 
everything, indeed, which the Romans expressed by ‘mores’. Hence 
it appears in the sixth of the ‘xxxix. Articles’ in reference to the 
Ti of the Apocrypha: ‘‘ And the other books the church doth 
read for example of life and instruction of manners”. 

Nothing can quite reconcile us to Jessica’s desertion of her father. 
He does not seem to have ill-treated her in any way except that he 
enforced a very strict and lonely life upon her. But he had made 
himself ‘impossible’ to her by his absorption in business and his 
attitude towards his neighbours. 


Scene 4. 


How Lorenzo plans to carry off Jessica, disguised as a page, with 
the help of Gratiano and others. 

5. ‘We have not bespoken, or ordered beforehand, torchbearers 
for ourselves.’ ‘Speak’ for ‘bespeak’ is like ‘fall’ for ‘ befall’, 
‘long’ for ‘belong’, ‘friend’ for ‘befriend’, &c. &c., often found 
in Shakespeare. (See Abbott, Shaks. Gram., § 460.) 

‘Us’ is the dative of the pronoun. For the use of ‘of’ compare 
below, iv. 1. 396— 

“*T humbly do desire your grace of pardon”. 


6. vile; not in so strong a sense as that in which it is now used; 
but rather=‘ poor’, ‘below the mark’. The stronger sense appears 
in the next scene, line 29. 

7. undertook, for ‘undertaken’, as ‘spoke’ for ‘spoken’. 


Io. it shall seem to signify, a pleasant sarcasm on this kind of 
correspondence. 

22. provided of a torchbearer. Yet another obsolete use of 
the preposition, exactly paralleled in Macbeth, i. 2. 13— 

‘¢ Supplied of kerns and gallowglasses”. 
See above note on ii. 2. 87. 

31. gold and jewels. It never even occurs to Lorenzo or 
Jessica or any of their friends that there was anything to be said 
against their going off with Shylock’s property. If they Aad thought 
about it, they would have defended it on the ground that Shylock 
made no use of his wealth, and that he was a common enemy with 
whom the ordinary laws did not hold. 

36. she do it. A/zsfortune is personified as a woman, like 
Fortune in scene 2. 

Scene 5. 


How Shylock goes to sup with Bassanio, and leaves his keys with 
Jesstca. 


2. the difference of. This is a further instance to add to a 
collection of Shakespearean uses of this preposition. Here it means 


Scene 5.] NOTES. 79 


‘in respect to’, and so, in comparing two persons, ‘between’, 
Compare— 
<*Since my soul . . . could of men distinguish ” 
(Hamlet, iii. 2. 68, 69). 


Another ‘objective’ use, of a slightly different kind, comes in line 36 
below— 
**T have no mind of feasting forth to-night ”. 


3 and 6. What and Why are used as exclamations of impatience. 
Cf. Julius Cesar, ii. 1. 1: ‘* What, Lucius, ho!” 


12. Jessica’s alacrity in taking the keys adds to Shylock’s feeling 
of uneasiness. 


15. Jessica, my girl, look to my house. However much 
Shylock inspires hatred and fear, it is impossible to hear him speak 
thus without some feeling of compassion. The audience have been 
let into the secret of the plot; Jessica and Launcelot are part of a 
conspiracy against the Jew, and here he is, committing his keys to 
one of them. The whole situation, therefore, is, like Shylock’s 
words, full of ‘dramatic irony’; that is, it bears a very different 
meaning to some of the persons present, from that which it conveys 
to those who are not in the secret. 


I am right loath to go. There is some ill a-brewing 
towards my rest. A helpless presentiment such as this, does more 
than anything to add to the horror and pity of disaster, because we 
are inclined to feel ‘it might so easily have been otherwise’. So, in 
Hamlet, the prince says, just before his fencing-bout with Laertes, 
**Thou wouldst not think how ill all is here about my heart: but it 
is no matter”. When Horatio urges him to pay heed to the pre- 
sentiment and to put off the fencing, Hamlet answers, ‘‘ Not a whit, 
we defy augury: there’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow: 
—if it be not now, yet it will come; the readiness is all”—and so he 
goes to his death. 

This ‘tragic irony’ and these fruitless misgivings might have en- 
gaged our feelings too much in Shylock’s favour but for the grotesque 
and grim 

‘* For I did dream of money-bags to-night ”. 


20. reproach. Launcelot has got hold of the wrong word again. 
Bhylock takes up his blunder, and accepts it in another sense. 


24. Black-Monday, z.ce. Easter Monday. ‘‘In the 34 Edward 
III. (1360), the 14 of April, & the morrow after Easter-day, K. 
Edwarde with his hoast lay before the cittie of Paris; which day 
was full darke of mist & haile, & so bitter cold that many men died 
on their horses backs with the cold. Wherefore unto this day it 
hath been called the Blacke Monday.”—Szow. (See note in Fur- 
ness. ) 


27. Masques, a form of amusement which consisted in a number 


So THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. [Act II. 


of persons, wearing visors and suitably disguised, going in procession 
to a house where festivities were on foot, and there acting a short 
play, or leading an elaborate dance. So in Henry VJ//., the king 
himself takes a number of ‘ masquers’ to Wolsey’s supper-party. 


29. wry-neck’d fife. Here ‘fife’ means a player on the fife, as 
in the third part of Henry VZ, v. 1. 16, trumpet =trumpeter: 


‘*Go, trumpet, to the walls and sound a parle”. 


Boswell, cited by Furness, quotes an exact parallel from Barnaby 
Rich’s (1616) Aphorismes: ‘‘ A fife is a wry-neckt musician, for he 
always looks away from his instrument”. 


30. clamber. The small old-fashioned window would be high up 
on the wall, just under the ceiling. 


32. varnish’d, painted, or disguised. 


35. By Jacob’s staff. The reference seems to be to Genesis 
xxxii. 10, where Jacob, on his return from Padan-aram, says, ‘‘ With 
my staff I passed over this Jordan; and now I am become two 
bands”’. 


36. to-night means here the ‘coming night’, while in line 18 
it means the ‘night before’. 


42. worth a Jewess’ eye, worth looking at, toa Jewess. Launce- 
lot puns on the old proverb, ‘ Worth a Jew’s eye’, used to express 
something very precious. The reading of the early editions is 
“‘ worth a Jewes eye”. 


43. Hagar’s offspring. As a Gentile and as a servant Launcelot 
is, to Shylock, a child of ‘ the bond-woman, not of the free’. 


46. Launcelot’s laziness is so extreme as to stir Shylock’s fancy. 
He compares him to three different animals in two lines. 


51. Shylock’s suspicion was, in this case, well-founded, but it is 
suspicion of such a kind and expressed in such a way that ‘human’ 
relations had ceased to be possible with him. 


54. Notice here the rhymzng close, frequent in the play. The 
rhyme not only marks the two ‘exits’, but also the proverbial or | 
epigrammatic sayings with which father and daughter take leave for 
the last time. 


Fast bind, fast find, as Shylock’s last words to his daughter, are 
again full of ‘dramatic irony’—as much so, in a different way, as old 
King Duncan’s last message from his bed-chamber to Lady Macbeth, 
his ‘most kind hostess’. We are prepared for the frightful shock 
and convulsion, which the news of his daughter’s flight will cause to 
Shylock. Irving goes the length of introducing a ‘dumb-show’ scene 
for which there is no warrant in the text. He shows the old Jew at 
the end of scene 6 returning after supper at Bassanio’s, knocking at 
the door of his empty house, and staring up in fear and anger when 
no answer comes. 


Scene 6.] NOTES. Sr 


Scene 6. 


How Lorenzo, helped by Gratiano and Salarino, runs away with 
the miser’s daughter in the disguise of a page. 


5. Venus’ pigeons, the doves that drew the airy chariot of 
Venus. 

7. Obliged, be careful to sound the -ed in reading this and similar 
lines, ¢.2. lines 13 and 16. .The word here signifies ‘ pledged pre- 
viously’. 

10. = What horse retraces a long distance with the same spirit 
with which he first traversed it? 

There is no need to suppose any reference here to a ‘ performing’ 
or ‘dancing horse’. The saying is applicable to any horse which has 
a long distance to go and come back. 

14. The simile is a striking one, all the more too that it is in har- 
mony with a main ‘motive’ of the play. Scarfed bark is a vivid 

hrase for a fresh-trimmed vessel, wearing her sails like so much 
nery. 

18. over-weather’d ribs. ‘Weather’ is here used in the same 
sense as that in which stone or brick is said to ‘ weather’, z.e. change 
shape and colour. 

24. Scan the line. What irregularity of metre is there, and how 
is it to be explained? 

26. Enter Jessica, above, z.¢. ina balcony. 

30. who love I. ‘‘ The inflection of who is frequently neglected. 
Cf. ‘Who I myself struck down’, Macbeth, iii. 1. 123” (Abbott, 
Shakesp. Gram., § 274). 

42. too light, a play between ‘light’, meaning ‘bright’, and 
‘light’ meaning ‘frivolous’, as in v. I. 129: 

‘* Let me give light, but let me not be light; 
For a light wife doth make a heavy husband”. 


43. Office of discovery, z.¢. the duty of a torch-bearer is to show 
things up. 

47. The close night, the secret or concealing night. So the 
witches in Macbeth are called ‘‘ close contrivers of all harms”. 


65. presently, not in its modern sense, but ‘immediately’. 
Generations of unpunctuality have weakened the force of the word, 
cf. ii. 9. 3. And compare the similar change of meaning in ‘anon’, 
‘just now’, ‘by and by’, ‘soon’. 

67. I am glad on’t. Here ‘on’ is interchangeable in usage 
with ‘ of’, as actually found above, ii. 2. 85 and 87. Abbott (SZakes. 
Gram., § 181) cites: : 

‘**God ha’ mercy ox his soul, 
And ofall Christian souls” (Hamlet, iv. 5. 200). 
(1330) F 


82 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. [Act II. 


Scene 7. 
Of the three caskets, the Prince of Morocco chooses the golden. 


3, 4. ‘‘ who” and ‘‘which” used interchangeably, Abbott, §§ 264, 
265. 

20. A golden mind: ‘golden’ here has the general sense of 
‘precious’, ‘excellent’, as elsewhere in, Shakespeare, ‘golden 
opinions’, ‘golden joys’, &c. 

25. The Moor’s good opinion of himself is so honestly and 
heartily expressed that it is little more than healthy military ‘swag- 
ger’ put into words. 

29. =To be doubtful of my own merits would be only a spiritless 
disparagement of myself. 

The feeling is much the same as that in Montrose’s famous lines: 


‘‘ He either fears his fate too much 
Or his deserts are small, 
Who fears to puts it to the touch 
To win or lose it all”. 


31. Why that’s the lady. At the first time this phrase occurs 
all the emphasis is on ‘/ady’. Lower down, on line 38, it is on 
‘that’s’. 

38. The rhythm of the speech changes from the broken style of 
indecision to a rapid and continuous flow of excited eloquence. The 
generous Moor loses the thought of his own merits in the picture, 
which his mind’s eye calls up, of the universal pilgrimage to the 
shrine of Portia. 

40. Mortal breathing, opposed to the sculptured figures of the 
saints to be found at most shrines. 

41. Hyrcanian deserts, in Asia, south of the Caspian Sea, 
famous for tigers. 

44. whose head spits in the face of heaven. The expres- 
sion is overstrained and the metaphor forced. Such a phrase is 
called a ‘conceit’. Over-elaborate fancy was a common fault in the 
style of the Elizabethan Age. Shakespeare often makes fun of it (e.g. 
below, ii. 9. 97), but he also is sometimes guilty of it himself. This 
play, however, is singularly free from ‘conceits’. It is quite in 
keeping that the Prince of Morocco should use them. 

50. =It would be too common to inclose her shroud in the dark- 
ness of the grave (see Glossary for the words). 

53. being undervalued, that is ‘silver’, not ‘she’. The ‘ratio’ 
of value between gold and silver in Shakespeare’s time was about 
10:1. Since then silver has greatly ‘ depreciated’. 

57. insculp’d upon, z.e. engraved on the surface of the coin. 
Coins of this kind were struck by Edward IV., and were in use from 
his reign to that of Charles I. They were of gold, containing a 


Scene 8.] NOTES. 83 


weight of metal that would be valued now at something between 
6s. 8d. and{1os. The name ‘angel’ was given to them from the 
figure which they bore of St. Michael subduing the dragon. 

64. a catrion Death, a fleshless skull. ; 

65. Scan the lines on the scroll. What metre are they written in? 

69. tombs. The two first Quartos and the First Folio have 
‘timber’, a mistake which Johnson was the first to correct. A similar 
blunder in all the early editions occurs, ii. 1. 35 (where see note). 
For the inference to be made from such a ‘state of the text’ see 
Appendix on the Text. 

75. welcome, frost. This is, says Halliwell, an inversion of the 
old proverb, ‘ farewell, frost’, used on the departure of anything 
unpleasing. 


Scene 8. 


How two gentlemen of Venice describe the rage of Shylock at finding 
his daughter flown, and the grief of Antonio at the departure of his 
friend for Belmont. 


Apparently we are to understand that the choice of the Prince of 
Morocco took place on the very night that Bassanio sailed. 

From ii. 2 to ii. 7 we seem to be dealing with the events of a 
single day. At the opening of the present scene, a night has elapsed 
since Bassanio’s departure. We hear that Shylock has discovered 
Jessica’s flight, and has suspected Bassanio of being concerned in it. 
We hear also of that for which i. 1 had somewhat prepared us, 
namely, of losses of Antonio at sea. 

16. Fled with a Christian, and so had cut herself off from the 
number of the chosen people. Shylock’s passion is of a piece with 
the convictions which the Jews held, at anyrate after the return from 
the Babylonish captivity. So when Ezra heard of the ‘mixed 
marriages’, he says of himself, ‘‘ I rent my garment and my mantle, 
and plucked off the hair of my head and of my beard, and sat down 
astonied ” (#zra, ix. 3). 

27, reason’d=talked, its usual sense in Shakespeare. 


33. You were best, zc. it would be best for you. ‘You’ is the 
indirect object in this phrase, and ‘were’ an impersonal verb, as 
comparison with Anglo-Saxon usage shows. But by Shakespeare’s 
time the origin of the phrase had been forgotten, and we find such 
expressions as ‘‘I were better to leave him”, ‘‘ She were better love 
a dream ” (for ‘‘me were”, ‘‘her were”). See Abbott, § 230- and 
note on v. i. 175 below. 

37. some speed of hisreturn. See note on ii. 5. 2. 

42. in for ‘into’, so v. 1. 56: ‘‘let the sounds of music creep in 
our ears”. We still speak of ‘ falling 2 love’. 

mind of love for ‘loving mind’; so in iii. 1. 9, ‘slips of 
prolixity ” = prolix slips. 


84 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. [Act II. 


45. conveniently, suitably. 


48. sensible=sensitive. The alteration in modern English of 
the use of the words ‘sensible’ and ‘sensibly’ gives a strange sound 
to some old passages in which they occur, ¢.g.: 


‘* What remains past cure 
Bear not too sensibly”, 


says Dalila, in Samson Agonistes, meaning, ‘Be not too sensitive 
about what cannot be helped’. 


52. embraced heaviness=grief which he hugs. It is charac- 
teristic of Antonio that he ‘gives way’ toemotion. For ‘embraced* 
compare ‘rash-embraced despair’ in iii. 2. 109. 


Scene 9. 


The Prince of Arragon makes his choice among the caskets, and 
chooses the stlver one. 


While Bassanio is on his way to Belmont, another suitor tries his 
fortune. This isa grandee of Spain. He is similar in some respects, 
in rank and splendour, to the Prince of Morocco. But his pride is 
of another kind altogether from that of the Moor. It is not boyish 
vanity, but impracticable self-conceit. A passage in Mr. Strachan- 
Davidson’s Czcero (‘‘ Heroes of the Nations” series, pp. 192, 193) 
illustrates these two kinds of vanity: ‘*‘ Two faults, of very different 
degrees of blackness, are liable to be confused under the common 
name of vanity or self-conceit. There are men into whose souls the 
poison seems to have eaten deep; they are pompous, overweening, 
repellent; their power of judgment and of action is impaired; .. . 
Sometimes, on the other hand, vanity is a mere superficial weakness, 
the accompaniment of a light heart, a quick, sensitive temperament, 
an unsuspicious loquacity, and an innocent love of display. Carlyle 
has hit off the difference very happily in the contrast which he draws 
between Boswell and his father: ‘Old Auchinleck had, if not the 
gay tail-spreading peacock vanity of his son, no little of the slow- 
stalking contentious hissing vanity of the gander, a still more fatal 
species’.”’ 

Arragon’s vanity is of the ‘gander-species’. He does not, like 
Morocco, allow himself to be carried away by an impulsive and 
generous fancy. He scarcely makes any reference to Portia at all, 
and chooses on grounds wholly unconnected with her, or with any- 
thing, but a belief in himself. She takes his measure in the biting 
phrase, 

**O these deliberate fools! When they do choose 
They have the wisdom by their wit to lose”, 


and treats him with a scarcely concealed dislike very different from 
the courtesy she had shown to the Moor. 


3. presently. See note on ii. 6. 65. 


Scene 9. ]. NOTES. 85 


26. meant by the fool multitude, z.e. meant to apply to the fool 
multitude. 


27. fond=foolish. So in iii. 3. 9. 
32. jump with=‘be at one with’. Cf. Richard J/7/,, iii. 1. 11, 


(a man’s outward show) ‘‘seldom or never jumpeth with the heart”, 
and the common proverb, ‘‘ Great minds jump together”. 


34. then to thee, What must be supplied here? See note on ii. 
2. 100. 


4I. degrees, steps or grades in distinction. The word in Shake- 
speare’s time was not limited, as it is now, to ‘degrees’ in university 
rank. Compare the ballad- -phrase ‘ a squire of low degree’. 


42. clear honour, z.e. ‘honour innocently won’. Similarly ‘clear’ 
is applied to allegiance in Macéeth in the sense of ‘unstained loyalty’. 
Note that ‘clear’ is not an ordinary attributive adjective here, but 
that its meaning is as it were diffused through the whole sentence; 
** Would that honour were won by merit and so won innocently ”. 
See note on ili. 2. 165. 

44. cover, z.¢. keep the hat on, as a sign of superiority of rank. 
Comp. iii. 5. 31. 

53. Too long a pause for that, ze. the pause is so long that 
what you find there cannot be what you are expecting. Arragon 
tries to argue against the decision of the ‘lottery’, instead of accept- 
ing it, like Morocco. 

61. Means ‘You must not wish to be both defendant and judge 
in your own cause, for the two offices are inconsistent with one 
another’, 

68. I wis. See w7s in the Glossary. 

71. You are sped, your destiny is decided. 

84. What would my lord? Portia rebukes, by imitation, the 
affectedly pompous tone of her gentleman-in-waiting. Mr. Beeching 
quotes, as parallel, Rzchard //., v. 5. 67— 


Groom. ‘‘ Hail royal prince”. 
King. ‘Thanks, noble peer”. 
88. sensible regreets, z.¢. substantial or tangible tokens of 
respect. 
89. commends and courteous breath, greetings and verbal 
courtesy. For ‘courteous breath’ compare 
**It must appear in other ways than words, 
Therefore I scant this dveathing courtesy”, v. 1. 141. 
92-94. Portia might have forgiven him for the sake of these three 
beautifully musical lines. 


97. high-day wit, the opposite of ‘ work-a- day words’. So in 
Merry Wives of Windsor, young Fenton is said to ‘speak holiday’. 


86 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. [Act III, 


Act Ill. 


In the preceding act the main subject was the elopement of the 
miser’s daughter. 

In this it is the choice of the right casket by Bassanio. But, to 
begin with, we have a scene that shows the consequences of Jessica’s 
flight, and prepares us for Shylock’s insistence on his bond. 


Scene I. 
Of Antonio's losses at sea, and of Shylock’s intended revenge. 


2. It lives there unchecked, 7z.e. the report remains uncontra- 
dicted. 

This phrase and what follows show that a long time had elapsed 
in the interval between the second and third acts. Tubal has had 
time to go to Genoa and return. The bond is within a fortnight of 
expiry (line 106). 

6. my gossip report. Report is figured as a talkative old 
woman, fond of ginger, and full of pretended emotions. (For other 
such ‘ picture-phrases’ in Shakespeare, see i. 2. 17, 18.) 


honest of her word, another specimen for a collection of 
idiomatic uses of this preposition. See also ‘slips of prolixity’ in 
line 10 below. 
8. knapped=not ‘snapped’, as in ‘he knappeth the spear in 
sunder’, but ‘gnawed’ or ‘nibbled’. See Glossary, and Furness’ 
note in his Variorum Edition. 


ro. the plain highway of talk. Similarly Hamlet calls conven- 
tional conversation ‘the beaten way of friendship’, Mamet, ii. 2. 
276. 

17. cross my prayer, that is, come between Salanio and 
Salarino before the former could say his prayer, ‘ Amen’ or ‘so be 
it’, to confirm the latter’s good wishes. 


20. none so well, none so well. Though weeks have passed 
since Jessica’s flight, Shylock’s rage is not abated. His own fury, 
the mockery of his enemies, the jeering of the boys in the streets 
have driven him to a point not far short of madness; and his passion 
appears in his convulsive and broken sentences, and the repetition 
of phrases. He has a ‘hunted’ look, and seems older, wilder, and 
more neglectful of himself than in the earlier scenes. 

34. rhenish, a ‘hock’, or white wine, is contrasted with red 
wine. 


36. bankrupt, one whose ‘ bank’ is broken, either 

(2) referring to the original meaning of ‘bank’, the bench or 
wooden stall at which a merchant sat, or 

(2) referring to the use of ‘bank’ for capital or stock of money. 
Compare below, line 97, ‘‘he cannot choose but break ”. 


Scene 1.] NOTES. 87 


37. a prodigal, This word, as applied to Antonio, has given 
some trouble to the critics. But Shylock’s peculiar habit of regard- 
ing money naturally comes out in his use of words, which are, so to 
say, scaled on a different principle from that of the rest of mankind. 
Launcelot thought himself starved in the Jew’s service, but to Shy- 
lock he appeared to be a ‘huge feeder’, and to ‘gormandise’. So 
Antonio is a ‘ prodigal’, though others would only have called him 
‘generous’ or ‘ munificent’. 

41. let him look to his bond. The phrase is repeated three times 
with increased feeling, and a peculiar emphasis on the last word. 

43. It has been pointed out that Shakespeare is in prose-writing 
not less great than in verse. The paragraph that follows is a superb 
instance of his skill in ‘ oratory’, so rhythmical in sound, so keen in 
argument, so overwhelming in passion. Yet it is so true to the 
character and the ‘situation’ that it appears inevitable and necessary, 
an effect of nature, not of art. On the stage, in the mouth of a 
great actor, the speech excites the hearers, almost beyond endurance, 
to pity and terror. Even Salanio and Salarino have no answer to it. 

58. sufferance, endurance or patience, as in i. 3. 100. 

60. it shall go hard but, &c., z.e. if I fail to improve upon my 
pattern it will not be for want of endeavour. 

62. Antonio sexds for his friends. His troubles have depressed 
him, and he avoids coming out of doors. The intimacy of Antonio 
with those who had helped in Jessica’s elopement, expressed in such 
a message as this, still further inflames Shylock’s anger. . 

71. For the omission of the relative, see note on i. I. 175. 

72. The curse seems to refer to some such place in the Bible as 
that in Danie/, ix. 11: ‘‘ All Israel have transgressed thy law; . 
therefore the curse is poured upon us, and the oath that is written in 
the law of Moses”. This again refers back to the terrible curse 
denounced against Israel, if it should not keep the Law, in Deztero- 
nomy, xxviii. 15-68, many of the points of which would apply to 
Shylock’s state, e.g. ‘‘ Thy daughters shall be given unto another 
people, and thine eyes shall look and fail with longing for them all 
the day long. All thy labours shall a nation which thou knowest not 
eat up; and thou shalt be only oppressed and crushed alway,”. 

75. would my daughter were dead. Such ‘wild and whirling 
words’ must not in fairness be pressed further against Shylock than 
- similar speeches against Lear. And in any case they are not merely 
the utterance of disappointed avarice. Jessica was already ‘ dead’ 
to him and to his nation in Shylock’s belief; she had ‘ cut herself off? 
from her people. 

77. Why, so. Shylock mutters as he makes rough calculation of 
the different sums lost. 

102. Out upon her! The expression ‘ out upon’ seems an exten- 
-sion of such a phrase as that found in the Lucrece, 

** Out, idle words! servants to shallow fools”. 


88 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. [Act III. 


103. Leah. The touch comes unexpectedly, and carries the mind 
of the hearer back to other days in Shylock’s life with a bitterness of 
contrast hardly less sharpthan in the terrible place in Macbeth, ii. 2. £4. 


IIo, at our synagogue. Places of worship were common 
resorts for business in Shakespeare’s day (e.g. St. Paul’s, in London). 
So that it is perhaps fanciful to press the reference here as Francois 
Victor Hugo does in a passage quoted by Furness: ‘‘The Jew 
invokes the Ancient of Days who spoke unto Moses aforetime: ‘ If a 
man cause a blemish in his neighbour, as he hath done, so shall it be 
done to him; breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth’. In 
entering his synagogue, Shylock entrusts his hatred to the safeguard 
of his Faith”. . Yet it is certainly true that Shylock regards himself 
as ‘the depositary of the vengeance of his race’ and religion.. (Com- 
pare, at the trial, ‘‘I have an oath in heaven”, and above, on hear- 
ing of Antonio’s losses, ‘I thank God, I thank God”. See alsoiv. 
I. 36.) 

Scene 2. 


How Bassanio, by discerning truth from show, makes choice of the 
right casket, and so achieves his quest; how news arrives from Venice 
that Antonio has lost all his ships and ts in prison for Bassanio’s 
sake; how Portia speeds Bassanio on his way to save hts friend. 


This is the middle point of the action where the intricacy of the 
plot is at its greatest. In the course of this scene the three stories 
become one, the issue of which Portia takes upon herself. 

An interval of more than a fortnight has elapsed since the last 
scene. The bond is forfeit, and a messenger will, ere the scene be 
over, have had time to arrive from Venice to report Antonio’s danger. 

‘*Enter Bassanio, Portia, &c., axa Attendants.” They must woo, 
like sovereign princes, each at the head of a retinue. How nobly 
and gracefully it is done! 


6. quality. See Glossary for different uses of this word in the play. 
15. o’erlook’d. To ‘overlook’ was to cast a spell upon, by 
means of the ‘glamour’ or power of the eye. So it comes to have 
the meaning of ‘to blight’ with the evil eye, as in Merry Wives, v. 
psy fe 
‘*Vile worm, thou wast o’erlook’d even in thy birth”. 
20. The line must be read: 

** And so’, | though yo’ | urs, not’ | yours, prove’ | it so’”. 
‘Yours’ is dissyllabic at first, then monosyllabic, after the strongly 
accented ‘not’, Compare the line in the Zemfest: 

““ Twelve ye’ | ar since’, | Miran’ | da, twelve’ | year since’”. 


See Abbott, Shakesp. Grammar, § 475 and § 480. 


22, 23. peize and eke, ‘peize’ means to keep suspended, ‘ eke” 
to make longer; together they mean ‘to delay’. 


Scene 2.] NOTES. 89 


29. fear the enjoying, z.e. ‘fear that I shall not enjoy’; as in v. 
I. 273, ‘fear keeping safe’ means ‘ fear that I may not keep safe’. 


33- Torture was applied in Great Britain to a prisoner suspected of 
treason as late as 1690. The opinion that Portia utters here of its 
uselessness became established by the beginning of the eighteenth 
century. It was never sanctioned by English ‘Common Law’, but 
inflicted by ministers of the crown with sovereign authority. ‘‘ The 
rack seldom stood idle in the Tower for all the latter part of Eliza- 
beth’s reign” (Hallam, Comst. Hist., vol. i.). 


39. Verb of motion omitted, as in ii. 2. 100, &c. 
41. True love will give the necessary insight. Compare i. 2. 27. 
44. The legend of the swan’s death-song is found in Greek litera- 


ture. Tennyson has given a poem to it, ‘The Dying Swan’, and 
a fine simile in the Passing of Arthur: 


‘the barge with oar and sail 
Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted swan 
That, luting a wild carol ere her death, 
Ruffles her pure‘cold plume, and takes the flood 
With swarthy webs”. 


55. young Alcides. The story of the rescue of Hesione, daughter 
of Laomedon, by Hercules, is told by Ovid, Metam. xi. 199 f. The 
love of Hercules is here said to have been not so great as that of 
Bassanio, because he saved Hesione for the sake of certain horses 
which Laomedon offered him. He gave Hesione to Telamon. All 
the detail of this picture is Shakespeare’s. 

56. howling Troy, #.e. loudly lamenting. So in the Authorized 
Version of /sazah, xxiii. 6, ‘‘ howl, ye inhabitants of the isle”. 

In the splendid series of images with which this speech is filled, 
Portia shows how deeply her heart and imagination are touched. 


Song. What is the metre of the song? 

63. fancy, that is, love, in which sense the word is common in 
Elizabethan English, e.g.— 

“*In maiden meditation, fancy-free ”, 
a line in which the last two words are often misquoted and mis- 
understood. 

73. So may the outward shows. The ‘‘so” does not refer to 
anything in the song, but to some previous thought of the speaker’s. 
We only hear the conclusion of Bassanio’s comments, 

least themselves, z.¢. least like the reality within. 

74. still=always. 

82. his, where we should expect ‘its’, See Abbott, Shakes. Gr., 
§ 228, where it is shown that ‘its’ was a new word, only formed in 
Shakespeare’s lifetime, and scarcely used by him except in his later 


plays. 


90 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. [Act ITY. 


84. stairs of sand. The phrase is a curious but most expressive 
one. Nothing could be imagined more untrustworthy than a stair 
of sand. There is therefore no need to press the spelling of the 
early editions—‘ stayers’ or ‘staiers ’,—and to suppose that the word 
means ‘ props’, as Knight suggested. 


85. beards, used for hair on the face generally, and sometimes 
for ‘moustache’ or ‘ whiskers’, particularly the military moustache, 
e.g. in the famous phrase which Jaques uses of the soldier, ‘‘ dearded 
like a pard”. 


86. white livers. See note on fi. I. 7. 


87. excrement. Cf. Love’s Labour’s Lost, v. 1. 109: ‘* Dally 
with my excrement, with my mustachio”. See Glossary. 


88. beauty. There are many references in Shakespeare to the 
practice of ‘making up’ complexions, e.g. Hamlet, iii. I. 51, a 
cheek ‘‘ deautied with plastering art”; and 149, ‘‘I have heard of 
your paintings, too; God has given you one face and you make your- 
selves another ”. 


gi. lightest, z.¢. fickle, ‘light 0’ love’. 


92. golden locks. Bassanio is so absorbed in his reflections that 
he seems to have forgotten the colour of his own lady’s hair. See i. 
I. 169, 170. 


94. supposed fairness, false beauty; ‘known’ does not qualify 
‘fairness’ but ‘locks’. 


96. The skull that bred them in the sepulchre. What word 
might be inserted after ‘them’ to make the construction plainer? 
What is such a construction called? 


97. guiled shore. See Glossary. 


g9. an Indian beauty. If the text be right, the last word is 
used ironically in contrast with the direct sense of ‘ beauteous’ in 
the previous line. But the repetition of the word suggests a printer’s 
error, and it is possible that we have not got the passage as Shake- 
speare wrote it. It has been proposed to alter the punctuation, and 
to put a semicolon after ‘Indian’. (See Appendix on the Text.) 


roo. times. The word offers a pretty exercise in interpretation. 
What does Shakespeare signify by it? and what similar uses can you 
quote? (You will find one in 77mon of Athens, iv. 3. 519— 


“Doubt and suspect, alas, are placed too late: 
You should have feared false times when you did feast”. ) 


102. hard food for Midas: a whole story in a phrase. The tale 
is told by Ovid, in the eleventh book of the Aletamorphoses. The 
student should collect for himself all the passages in this play which 
contain references to classical stories. Shakespeare realized these 
stories so vividly that he could say what occurred between one 


Scene 2.] NOTES. ce) 


incident and another, where the classical story-teller himself had not 
filled the gap, ¢.g. in the wonderful simile: 


“* Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless, 

So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone, 

Drew Priam’s curtain in the dead of night, 

And would have told him half his Troy was burnt, 

But Priam found the fire, ere he his tongue”. 

—2 Henry IV., i. 1. 70. 
103. pale and common drudge. It is curious that the ‘ pale- 

ness’ of silver repels Bassanio, whilst that of lead moves him ‘more 
than eloquence’. Taking the words as they stand, we must be care- 
ful to emphasize ‘¢Ay’ at the beginning of line 106, and suppose a 
contrast between the paleness of the public slave and that of the 
stern challenger. But here also, as in 99, the repetition of the word 
suggests a printer’s error. Warburton’s emendation of ‘ paleness’ to 
‘plainness’ seems likely to be right. 


tog. thoughts, anxieties, as in the common Elizabethan phrase, 
‘to take thought’, z.e. to brood over cares. 


124. having made one. Analyse the whole sentence. In what 
respect does it differ from the usual grammatical forms? 


131. continent. Shakespeare, in spite of his ‘small Latin’, uses 
derivatives from that language with a clear feeling for their original 
senses. As he gives to ‘continent’ the meaning of ‘that which 
holds’, so in Hamlet, to ‘extravagant and erring’, that of ‘ roaming 
and straying’. 

140. Notice the effect produced here, as in line 110 and the 
following, by the rhymed passage. The speech of the lovers grows 
musical with happiness. 

142. contending in a prize, that is, in a race for a prize. 

158. livings, properties. 

159. account, sum, in gross. The metaphors are drawn from 
a merchant’s books. With noble courage and grace Portia speaks 
openly of that which any woman less sincere or less wise would have 
tried to pass over or to disparage—her wealth, wishes it sixty times 
as great as it is, then by one gift abolishes it, and presents herself to 
Bassanio, as she is, by herself alone. The simplicity and humanity 
of the words here are more ‘symptomatic’ of the real nature of 
Portia than the oratory in the trial scene. 


163, 164. can learn, ‘may learn’. The original distinction in 
meaning between ‘can’ and ‘may’ is here maintained. To ‘can’ is 
to know, to have the wit or skill to do something. To ‘may’ is to 
have the thing in one’s might or power. Thus ‘may’ here means I 
am not disabled by age; ‘can’ means further, I have the faculty to 
learn. 

165. her gentle spirit commits itself, is equivalent to ‘her 
spirit gently commits itself’, The force of the adjective is diffused 


92 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. [Act III. 


over the whole phrase. Compare the expression in Macbeth, i. 6.: 
“‘the air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself Unto our gentle 
senses”: or in this play, iii, 4. 36, where ‘fair’ similarly seems to 
qualify more than the substantive to which it is attached. 

169, 171. But now . . . but now, expresses complete and 
sudden change from one moment to another. 


179. The excited feelings are compared here to a crowd of loyal 
subjects in a state of joyous uproar, as in Julius Caesar they are 
compared to subjects in insurrection: 


‘*The genius and the mortal instruments 
Are then in council, and the state of man— 
Like to a little kingdom—suffers then 
The nature of an insurrection”. 


183. Each cry is a ‘something’, a word with a meaning, but when 
all are mixed together they become inarticulate, ‘a wild of nothing’, 
a chaos without meaning; and yet not without meaning, for the very 
noise is expressive of delight. Schlegel’s translation is an admirable 
commentary on this passage: 


**Wo jedes Etwas in einander flieszend, 
Zu einem Chaos wird von nichts als Freude, 
Laut und doch sprachlos”. 


193. from me. There is a play here on the double meaning of 
the preposition, either “given by” or ‘‘taken from”. Taken in the 
second sense, the phrase means, as Johnson points out, ‘‘none away 
from me, none that I shall lose if you gain it”. The quibble is 
slight enough, but any quip is worth making to relieve the solemn 
insipidity of a formal congratulation. Here again Schlegel is the best 
commentary : 


“‘Tch wiinsch’ euch was fiir Freud’ ihr wiinschen konnt 
Denn sicher wiinscht ihr keine von mir weg”. 


For a very similar quibble on two senses of ‘ from’, compare Richard 
LTI., iv. 4. 255-260. 

195. bargain, that is, contract. The word is, of course, used 
without any implication of gain to one party as compared with the 
other. It is interesting to collect from the play all the instances of 
words which have modified their meaning since Shakespeare’s time, 
such as ‘complexion’, ‘ estate’, ‘shrewd’, ‘convenient’, ‘envy’, &ce 


197. so=provided that. 


216. Salanio, spelt very variously in the early editions. The 
Cambridge editors understand a new personage to be introduced 
here, called ‘Salerio’. I prefer to follow Dyce and Furness and 
Beeching, and to regard the variations as printer’s errors. In the 
previous scene Antonio had sent for Salanio and Salarino. One of 
them remained in Venice to comfort the Merchant, the other sped to 
Belmont to procure rescue. 


Scene 2.] NOTES. 93 


225. Lorenzo excuses himself for his appearance without invitation. 
Salanio had pressed him to come, with a ‘‘reason for it”. He wished 
to summon all Antonio’s friends into council. 


233. estate, condition, where we should rather use the other 
‘doublet’ state. Compare the gradual differentiation of ‘history’ 
and ‘story’, ‘to’ and ‘too’, ‘of’ and ‘off’. In line 256 below, con- 
trariwise, ‘state’ is used where we should say ‘estate’. By this 
ambiguous answer we are meant to understand that Antonio was 
afflicted not in mind or body, but in estate. 


236. royal merchant, not in any technical sense of ‘privileged’, 
as some of the commentators suppose, but ‘ princely’, ‘munificent’, 
as Antony calls Ceesar ‘ royal and loving’. 


239. We are the Jasons. The story of the Zife and Death of 
Jason should, by any who are not familiar with it, be read in William 
Morris’ poem. This line contains a clear reminiscence of one in 
Marlowe’s Zhe Jew of Malta (in rhythm as well as in meaning): 
‘*T’ll be thy Jason, thou my golden fleece” (Act iv. sc. 4). 


240. shrewd, spiteful, bad, means literally ‘accursed’. 


245. Iam half yourself. Compare what Brutus’ Portia says to 
him (Julius Cesar, ii. 1. 267): 


** No, my Brutus; 
You have some sick offence within your mind 
Which by the right and virtue of my place 
I ought to know of; ... 
. unfold to me, your self, your half, 
Why you are heavy”. 


259. his mere enemy. Jere, by derivation, means unmixed, 
pure. In modern usages, e.g. a ‘mere trifle’, it has a depreciatory 
sense, ‘nothing more than’. In this passage it signifies ‘ thorough- 
going’, ‘intense’, 

273. confound = overthrow, as in the ‘‘let me never be con- 
founded” of the 72 Deum in the Book of Common Prayer. 


275. impeach the freedom, z.¢. he threatens an action to annul 
the city’s charter. Shakespeare uses terms that would be vividly 
understood by English citizens possessed of rights to administer 
justice by royal charter. Compare iv. I. 39, where Shylock says: 


‘* If you deny it, let the danger light 
Upon your charter and your city’s freedom”, 


Venice, of course, was not a ‘free city’ in the sense that her 
judicial powers depended on a charter; she was an independent 
sovereign state. In such points as this Shakespeare used the terms 
of his own country and his own time, as being to his hearers the 
truest and most vivid; just as the ‘Old Masters’ painted the persons 
of Hebrew history in the dress of their own Italian countrymen; or 
as the German schoolboy, quoted by Jespersen (Progress in Lan- 

( M830} I 


94 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. [Act III. 


guage, p. 363), described Hannibal as swearing to be always a 
Frenchman towards the Romans. 

Ruskin, in an interesting place, extracted in the Frondes Agrestes, 
defends the Shakespearean practice as being right and true, in con- 
trast to modern ‘ realism’. 


279. envious=hateful, as ‘envy’=hatred, in iv. I. 126. 


282. Chus, z.e. Cush, a name taken, like Tubal, from one of the 
early chapters of Genesis. 

Jessica’s recollections here make it certain that an interval of some 
length of time must be supposed to elapse between the events in 
Act i. and those in Act: ii. 


290. That is, ‘the best-condition’d and most unwearied spirit’, the 
superlative in ‘best’ is carried on to ‘unwearied’. Refer back to 
note on ii. 1. 46. 


308. you shall hence, verb of motion implied, as in ii. 2. 100. 


311. Since you are dear-bought, I will love you dear. 
Portia has a delightful way of relieving from embarrassment those on 
whom she bestows kindness. Here she covers her generosity under 
what seems a rather spiteful pun, and so escapes, and gives escape to 
her friends. For a similar instance of her ‘ tact’, see v. I. 137. 

So rapidly and brilliantly does she rise to the occasion here that 
she hardly gives us time to realize the sacrifice she is making. It is 
all the more heroic that she spares us the ‘heroics’. By an effort of 
clear imagination, she sees that Bassanio would never afterwards 
have forgiven himself if he had hesitated now. By prompt self- 
suppression she makes it easy for him to do the right thing. 


315. between you and I. Jespersen, Progress in Language, 
p- 246, says, ‘* 7 was preferred to me after and because the group of 
words ‘you and I’ would occur in everyday speech so frequently as 
to make it practically a sort of stock-phrase taken as a whole, the 
last word of which was therefore not inflected”. He quotes a num- 
ber of instances similar to this from great writers, to which we may 
add that ‘Mr. Perker’ uses this very phrase in chapter x. of the 
Pickwick Papers. 


Scene 3. 


The three months having expired, and the bond being forfett, 
Antonio has been cast into prison; guarded by a gaoler, he now seeks 
an interview with Shylock, who refuses to hear him. 


A short interval of time has elapsed since the last scene. The 
trial is fixed for the morrow. Antonio is expecting the arrival of 
Bassanio. 


g. naughty, fond, have altered in sense somewhat since Shake- 
speare’s time. ‘Naughty’ was not then confined to children, nor 


Scene 4.] NOTES. 95 


used in a half-humorous way, but meant as much as ‘ wicked’, 
‘worthless’, Compare v. I. 91: 


‘* So shines a good deed in a naughty world”. 


What is the derivation of the word? 
For ‘fond’, see Glossary. 


18. impenetrable, whose heart cannot be touched. We may 
compare Cloten’s use of ‘ penetrate’ in Cymbdeline, ii. 3. 14: ‘SI am | 
advised to give her music 0’ mornings; they say it will Jenetrate”’. 


19. kept, lived. To ‘keep’ remains in this sense among Cam- 
bridge undergraduates. 


27. The reading followed here is Theobald’s. See Appendix on 
the Text. 


Scene 4. 


How Portia, leaving the charge of her house to Lorenzo and Jessica, 
departs, under pretence of a vow, for Venice, to aid her husband in 
the rescue of Antonio. 


The time is the afternoon of the day on which Bassanio made his 
choice among the caskets. After a hasty ceremony of marriage, he 
has parted from his wife at the door of the church. She and the 
rest of the company have just returned to the house. (From v. I. 
249, it appears that Portia left Belmont almost immediately after 
Bassanio.) Full of the daring plan she has devised, she astonishes 
Lorenzo by the courage she shows at her lord’s departure. 


2. conceit is by derivation the same word as ‘concept’, from 
which it has become ‘ differentiated’ gradually, both in spelling and 
in sense (compare ‘estate’ and ‘state’, ‘history’ and ‘story’). In 
meaning, ‘conceit’ has passed from a notion or idea in general to 
a quaint or fanciful notion, and finally to a notion of one’s own 
importance. Here it still bears its original meaning of idea or con- 
ception. Compare i. I. 92. 


3. godlike amity. Lorenzo means that Portia shows her 
esteem of friendship as something higher than human by speeding 
Bassanio on his way at sucha moment. There is not a covfizct here, 
as has been sometimes said, between love and friendship. It is more 
correct to say that Portia feels the truth of her husband’s love 
involved in the loyalty of his friendship; but indeed Shakespeare in 
this scene, as often elsewhere, uses the same word ‘love’ of both 
passions, as the cavalier did of devotion to his mistress and devotion 
to his cause: 


**T could not love thee, dear, so much, 
Loved I not honour more”. 


9. =Than commonplace kindness can oblige you to be. 
11. For the double negative, compare iv. 1. 56, 73, 159. 


} 


96 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. [Act III. 


12. waste the time, spend the time (just as Valentine says in 
Two Gentlemen of Verona, ii. 4. 63, ‘‘ We have conversed and spent 
our hours together”). ‘Waste’ has here no sense of unprofitable- 
ness. Rolfe compares Milton (Sonnet to Mr. Lawrence), 


‘* Help waste a sullen day”. 


See note on ‘ bargain’, line 195 above, aoe ‘imposition’, line 33 
below. 


15. Manners, compare note on ii. 3. 17. 


25. husbandry and manage, stewardship and control. What 
is the derivation of ‘husbandry’? To what Greek word, with a 
common English derivative, does it exactly correspond? 


27. I have toward Heaven breathed a secret vow. This 
vow is not a mere pretext to cover her journey. It is doubly charac- 
teristic of Portia, first because such a vow is in keeping with the 
many small touches by which we learn to think of her as contempla- 
tive and. devout (4g. i. 2. 11-18, 48, 91, 113} lll. 2. 13; iv. I. 178- 
196; v. 1. 89-91); and secondly, because though the vow is in the 
literal sense set aside or postponed, this only arises from the fact 
that her noble and brave spirit sees that here she can act as well as 
pray. Afterwards, when with wit and courage she has done all that 
was to be done, she fulfils her vow. As she returns home 


‘* She doth stray about 
By holy crosses, where she kneels and prays 
For happy wedlock hours” (v. I. 31, 32). 


The vow is in the spirit of Imogen or Desdemona; the actzon is like 
Rosalind or Beatrice. The union of the two belongs to Portia. 


33. imposition, something ‘put upon’ a person, but without 
any of the secondary idea of fraud, which the word often carries in 
modern English. Compare i. 2. 114. 

Another instance of Portia’s generosity of mind; she represents her- 
hospitality and trust as a ¢ask laid upon Lorenzo, and so tries to 
relieve him from a sense of obligation. 


36. in all fair commands, the adjective colours the whole phrase, 
not ‘commands’ only. See note on iii. 2. 165. 


45. Now, Balthasar. The incident of Balthasar’s ride from 
Belmont to Padua, and from Padua to the Ferry, is one of the most 
exciting in the play, though it is only by slight touches here and 
there that we are enabled to follow it. 

Bassanio had only been gone an hour or two before the solution 
occurred to Portia (v. 1. 249). She must go herself to Venice. But 
she wants a lawyer’s robes and some notes on technical points of 
legal procedure. How to get them? There is her kinsman Dr. 
Bellario of Padua, the most famous jurisconsult in Italy. Her trusty 
man, Balthasar, must ride on the spur to Padua with a letter to the 
doctor. Arrived at Padua he finds the lawyer laid up with sickness, 


Scene 5.] NOTES. . 97 


but also pen in hand, answering an invitation from the Doge of 
Venice to come and decide the very case on which Portia had 
written to him. Cannot the two messages be made to work together? 
Portia shall be Bellario’s deputy to the Doge. While the robes are 
being fetched, the doctor writes two letters, one, afterwards read 
aloud in court, to His Grace the Doge, recommending Portia as 
substitute for himself, under the name Balthasar, borrowed from her 
messenger; the other to Portia. 

Armed with these letters and the precious robes, Balthasar gallops 
off again to ride through the night, so that he may catch his Lady 
at the Ferry in the morning. There was no time to be lost, for even 
Bassanio, travelling straight, would only arrive on the evening before 
the trial (iii. 3. 34), and he had some hours’ start. Balthasar reaches 
the Ferry in time to meet the lumbering coach which had brought 
Portia along one side of the triangle, while he had been riding the 
other two. Portia just reaches the court at the critical instant. 


52. imagined speed. Cf. Sozmet xliv.— 
‘* For nimble thought can jump both sea and land 
As soon as think the place where he would be”. 


53. traject, Rowe’s correction for the printer’s error ‘ tranect’. 
Hunter quotes from Coryat’s Crudztzes, ‘‘ There are in Venice thirteen 
ferries or passages, which they commonly call Traghetti”’. 

56. convenient speed, the speed that suits the occasion. 

67. reed voice, ‘ voix flutée’, as F. Victor Hugo translates it. 

69. quaint lies, ingenious lies. 

72. I could not do withal, ‘I could not help it’. Dyce quotes 
from Lesclaircissement de la Langue Francoise (1530), ‘I can nat 
do withall, a thyng lyeth nat in me, or I am nat in faulte thata 
thyng is done”. 

77. Jacks, fellows, a term of contempt common in Shakespeare. 

80. in my coach, which stays for us At the park gate. 
Portia throughout this scene shows not only infinite spirit and 
courage, but a power of combination and decisive command equal to 
that of Lady Macbeth herself. Compare the words to Balthasar— 

‘* Waste no time in words, 
But get thee gone: I shall be there before thee”. 


Scene 5. 


Of Jessica, Lorenzo, and Launcelot at Belmont, and what Jessica 
says wn praise of Portia. 
This scene occurs probably just after the departure of Portia and 
Nerissa. 
1, the sins of the father, &c., another instance to be added to 
a collection of references to the Bible in this play. 
(M 330) G 


98 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. [Act IV. 


2. I fear you--I fear for you; compare the note on iii. 2. 29 
above, and Abbott, Shak. Gram., § 200. 


4. agitation, a ‘malapropism’ for ‘cogitation’. 
9g. one by another, means either ‘one in competition with 
another’, or ‘taking one with another, reckoning all up’. 


29. cover, a play on two different senses of the word. (i) To 
put the dishes on the table; (ii) to put the hat on the head. 


32. quarrelling with occasion, like ‘defying the matter’ in line 
46 below, seems to mean to slight the business in hand for the sake 
of a verbal quibble. 


40. O dear discretion! Discretion is invoked as the quality 
which Launcelot had shown least of. His words are an army, 
‘suited’, that is, in uniform. They correspond to one another, but 
not to the subject of discourse; they obey his orders like so many 
soldiers, but he orders them to the wrong posts. 


43. A many. It is one of the curiosities of language that we still 
say ‘a few’, while ‘a many’ has become obsolete, or only provincial. 
The phrase is to be explained as a ‘ collective’. 


44. Garnish’d like him. Does this mean as ill-furnished with 
discretion as Launcelot? The habit of quibbling and punning was 
universal in Shakespeare’s time. Compare note oni. 2. 7. 


52. merit it, Pope’s emendation. The double ‘it’ at the end of 
the line seems to have led to misprints. 


62. stomach =appetite. 


Act 1V.—Scene I. 


Of the trial of the cause between Shylock the Jew and Antonio the 
merchant; how Portia, disgutsed as a Doctor of Ctvil Law, delivers 
Antonio out of the hand of Shylock; and how Bassanio ts persuaded 
to give the Doctor his betrothal ring, which he had vowed never to 
part from but with his life. 


The scene which follows answers in some points to the scene of 
Bassanio’s choice of the leaden casket. To the eye it is even more 
splendid; the background is the great hall of the High Court of 
Justice; in front is a throng of eager people, Antonio’s merchant- 
friends from the Rialto, Bassanio’s companions-in-arms, and magni- 
ficoes from the ducal court, all in dress of many colours; round the 
bench and near the prisoner stand ruffed halberdiers; aloft sits the 
Doge, in crimson velvet with an upper garment ‘ of white cloth of 
silver, with great massy buttons of gold’; a degree below him sit 
the Senators in red cloth tipped with white ermine; on the right, 
in earnest talk with Bassanio and Gratiano, stands Antonio, ready 
for either issue; and, presently, on the left, enter, with bond and 
knife and scales, Shylock, alone. 


Scene 1. ] NOTES. 99 


1. What, where we should rather say ‘now’, or ‘well’. Com- 
pare, ‘‘ What, Jessica”, 11. 5. 3 and 4. 

5. Uncapable. It has been pointed out that the use of ‘un-’ and 
*in-’ in compounds varies capriciously, or by laws of euphony so 
delicate that they cannot be analysed. Thus we say, ‘zsequal’ but 
‘zmequality ’, ‘ wzgrateful’ but ‘ zmgratitude’. 

5,6. empty from is equal to ‘empty of’. This double use is 
like the Latin construction with genitive or ablative in the case of a 
word such as egeo. 


7. qualify, z.e. to temper, or alter by mixing or blending. The 
word carries on the metaphor implied in ‘dram of mercy’. 


Io. envy. See Glossary on the word. 
16. Make room, indicates the crowded state of the court. 


18. z.¢. ‘that you are carrying this show of hatred up to the 
moment when you would have to carry it into action’. 


20. remorse. See Glossary. 


29. royal merchant. Here the phrase seems to have the tech- 
nical meaning which it has not in iii. 2. 236. It signifies a merchant 
of such wealth and position as to be dignified with a special title 
from the court. 


39. charter and freedom. See note on iii. 2. 276. 


43. it is my humour. The word contains a reference to the 
strange physiological theories of the Middle Ages, whereby certain 
mental dispositions were connected with different ‘moistures’ or 
‘humours’ of the body. Many terms still in use are derived from 
this old belief, such as ‘phlegm’ and ‘phlegmatic’ applied to temper; 
‘choleric’, ‘melancholy’, ‘sanguine’, &c. The ‘temperament’ or 
‘complexion’ of a man was thought to depend on the blend of his 
humours. 


43, and following. These lines contain Shylock’s first defence for 
his insistence on the execution of his bond. Some feelings, he says, 
are ultimate; they cannot be further analysed. They resemble 
hysterical states, or strange bodily impulses over which the reason 
has no control, such as, instinctive fear of certain animals. Of this 
sort is my antipathy to Antonio. 


47. gaping pig. Malone quotes from Nashe’s Pierce Penilesse: 
*<Some will take on like a mad man if they see a pigge come to the 
table”. A boar’s head was, and is, served with a lemon in its open 
mouth, 


49. for affection, Mistress of passion. Affection here has its 
old sense of an impulse of any kind. It is distinguished from 
passion as excitement from feeling, the nervous impulse from the 
mental state. The whole passage may be rendered, ‘ For impulse 
controls feeling, and excites a mood corresponding to itself’. This 
mood may or may not be veasonab/e. For instance, a cat may cause 


100 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. [Act IV. 


in some particular individual a nervous shock of the kind which is 
always connected with the mental feeling of fear. In that case fear 
will be felt in spite of any reassurance by the reason that the cat 
cannot do any real harm. 

The passage is interesting, both for the subtlety of the argument 
underlying the simple illustrations quoted by Shylock, and also be- 
cause it is one where ‘emendation’ (see Appendix on the Text) has 
certainly given us Shakespeare’s original words. The quartos and 
folios put a full stop at ‘affection’, and put ‘ Masters’ or ‘ Maisters’ 
at the beginning of the next line. The emendation, adopted in the 
text, is Thirlby’s. Dr. Abbott has confirmed it by reference to two 
other places where ‘mastres’, ‘maistresse’, ‘mistress’, have been 
confused, viz. 7emfest, ii. 1. 5; and Beaumont and Fletcher, Zhe 
Coxcomb, ii. 3. 9: ‘‘ Where be thy mastres, man? I would speak 
with her ”. 

54. a harmless necessary cat. The phrase is one of those 
which, for some subtle reason, stick in people’s memory, and enter 
into the language so fully as to be used constantly by folks who 
could not say where they come from. It is only requisite to look at 
attempted translations to see that the magic of such phrases is not 
transferable; 4g. 


“‘Un chat, familier et inoffensif” (F. Victor Hugo). 
‘¢ Katz’, ein harmlos niitzlich Thier” (Schlegel). 


How many of such phrases, since become ‘household words’, can 
you collect from this play? 

55. a woollen bag-pipe. The adjective refers strictly to the 
covering of the wind-bag. ‘The wind-bag itself is commonly made 
of ‘ greased leather’, but it is often covered with woollen cloth. It 
is hard to see why the commentators have made so much difficulty 
over the epithet, which conveys just the idea of bleating inoffensive- 
ness that the passage requires. 


57. lodged hate, z.¢. hate that has gathered and accumulated. 
59. a losing suit, z.e. a suit by which he will forego the repay- 
ment of his money, and take flesh instead. 
61. the current of thy cruelty, a sweeping tide of feeling, just 
as Othello compares his own wrath 
**to the Pontic sea, 


Whose icy current and compulsive course 
Ne’er feels retiring ebb”. 


62, and following. Mark the peculiarly forcible effect of the 
thrust and counter-thrust of the argument in these epigrammatic 
single lines. 


63. Bassanio’s question contains the refutation of Shylock’s philo- 
sophy. ‘True, we ave feelings, produced by external physical 


Scene 1.] NOTES. 101 


causes, feelings which we cannot keep from arising. But we need 
not act upon them, unless we will to do it.’ 


67. think you question=remember you are holding converse 
with. 

73. no noise with ‘forbid’ makes a double negative, as in 56 
above and 157 below. 

74. fretten. See Abbott, § 344. 

79. conveniency, promptitude or despatch. 


86. What judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong? This 
is Shylock’s second defence. He here takes ‘wrong’ to mean that 
which is contrary to statute law, and denies therefore that he himself 
is doing any wrong. He thus occupies the position of the Scribes 
and Pharisees of the time of Christ, when, for instance, they con- 
sidered it no ‘ wrong’ to refuse help to near relatives, so long as the 
formula of the Law respecting ‘ Corban’ was properly observed. He 
claims the literal fulfilment of legal obligations, and believes ‘ right’ 
to consist in that. See, further, note on line 200. 


88. Shylock’s third line of argument: ‘You admit property in 
human flesh by allowing the purchase of slaves. I have acquired 
property in a pound of Antonio’s flesh. Grant me possession of that 
which is lawfully mine.’ 

The argument here is far stronger than that in Silvayn’s Orator, 
with which it has been compared. Silvayn’s Jew claims to be 
allowed to take a pound of flesh as a mzlder penalty for a defaulting 
debtor than the common one of slavery. Shylock bases his claim on 
the same principle as that implied in the purchase of slaves. The 
court, as is evident from line 101, feel the argument unanswerable. 


89. parts, functions, duties. 
tor. Upon my power, by my constitutional authority. 


Up to this point Shylock has had the advantage over his enemies, 
and despair settles upon Antonio’s friends. There seems no alterna- 
tive but either to grant the Jew his forfeit or to adjourn the court. 
It is now that the Duke mentions that he has sent for Bellario, and 
it is now that we hear of Portia’s arrival in Venice, only just in time 
for her purpose. 

111. A tainted wether, touched with some disease or disabled 
by some accident. For the bearing of this passage on the character 
of Antonio, see the study in the Introduction. 


120. Not on thy sole, but on thy soul. In Shakespeare’s 
time these two words were not, as now, pronounced exactly alike, 
but ‘soul’ was longer, almost dissyllabic in sound. The same play 
on words occurs in Act i. sc. I of Julius Caesar. This passage 
between Shylock and Gratiano takes place while the Duke reads 
Bellario’s letter. 

122. hangman’s axe, hangman was used in quite a general sense 
as an ‘executioner’, whatever the method of execution might be. 


102 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. [Act IV. 


123. envy. See Glossary on the word. 


125. inexorable is the correction of the Third Folio for the 
earlier ‘inexecrable’. Dr. Abbott attempts to defend the latter, as 
meaning ‘not to be execrated enough’, ‘too bad for execration’, 
which does not fit in with the first half of the line; while, on the 
other hand, ‘inexorable’ just carries on the sense of the end of 
line 123. 

126 seems to mean ‘ Let justice be blamed for having allowed you 
to live so long’. 


128. To hold, z.e. soas to hold. Pythagoras and his doctrine of 
the transmigration of souls are referred to also in Twelfth Night and 
As You Like It, two plays written perhaps not much later than the 
Merchant of Venice. 


131. a wolf, hang’d for human slaughter. ‘‘On the Con- 
tinent, down to a comparatively late period, the lower animals were 
in all respects considered amenable to the laws. Domestic animals 
were tried in the common criminal courts, and their punishment on 
conviction was death; wild animals fell under the jurisdiction of the 
ecclesiastical courts.” Trials of domestic animals were founded ‘‘on 
the Jewish Law, as laid down in Exodus, xxi. 28”. The last trial 
and execution of an animal (a cow) in France took place in 1740. 
See the amusing article in Chambers’ Book of Days, vol. i. pp. 126-8. 


132. The belief in the interchange of souls between men and 
wolves is ancient and wide-spread, and has led to some of the most 
uncanny stories in existence. See Baring Gould’s Book of the Were- 
wolf; and, for the connection of the belief with that in the trans- 
migration of souls, see Tylor’s Anthropology. 


157. impediment to let him lack, is to be compared with 
‘forbid to make no noise’, above, line 73. There is a negative too 
many for modern English grammar in these constructions, though 
not for good Elizabethan, any more than for good Greek. Compare 
‘just cause or impediment why these two persons should not be ” 
joined together’, where the positive word ‘cause’ is coupled with 
the negative ‘impediment’. 

163. Enter Portia. 


Up to now, as Booth, the great American actor, notes (quoted by 
Furness), Shylock has fixed all his attention upon the Duke, and has 
shown only contempt for the other persons present. Bellario’s letter 
disturbs him, and -he anxiously watches the young lawyer as he 
comes into court. 

Observe that Portia comes, as Bellario’s deputy, to ‘ determine’ the 
cause (line 103 above). She is therefore judge, not advocate. She 
takes command of the whole cause, and speaks with the authority of 
the whole court (line 294 below). 

For a similar case, in Spanish law, of the delegation of a judicial 
decision to a ‘referee’ in the person of a jurisconsult, see an extremely 


Scene 1.] NOTES. 103 


interesting note by J. T. Doyle, quoted on page 417 of Furness’ 
Variorum Edition. 


164. Take your place, that is, on the judge’s bench. The Duke 
has been so perplexed by the subtlety and vigour with which Shylock 
has put his case that he is glad enough to leave the responsibility 
of deciding to someone else. Portia could not have had so free a 
hand if she had arrived earlier. 


172, 173. ‘Yet in such a form that no technical objection can be 
raised to your procedure.’ 


174. danger is an ancient legal term, derived from Low Latin 
dominium, and meaning (i) absolute control in general, (ii) the 
special form of control conferred by the allowance of a legal claim. 
The words may be rendered, ‘You come under his claim, do you 
not? 


176. Then must the Jew be merciful, ze. the Jew must be 
merciful, if the case is to end well. Shylock takes the word in its 
legal sense. 


178. ‘ Mercy isa virtue that is not to be forced’; ‘‘la clémence ne 
se commande pas”, as F. Victor Hugo translates it. For ‘quality’ 
see Glossary. strained=forced or constrained. 


185. attribute to awe, that which properly belongs to awe, its 
characteristic symbol. In line 189 below, ‘attribute’ signifies ‘ pro- 
perty’ or ‘natural quality’. 

194. We do pray for mercy, refers, of course, to a clause in the 
Lord’s Prayer, which Portia takes for granted that Shylock knows. 


200. My deeds upon my head! Shakespeare may have had in 
his mind a similar cry in a court of justice, ‘‘ His blood be upon us 
and upon our children” (JZa¢t., xxvii. 25). 


I crave the Law! or as he said before, ‘‘I stand here for Law!” 
This claim of Shylock’s, with the appeal of Portia to which it is a 
reply, may be paralleled with many passages in the Epistles of Saint 
Paul, where the demand of the strict Jew for the literal fulfilment of 
the whole of the Law is shown to be self-destructive and to lead of 
necessity to an Equity or Charity which transcends, but does not 
evade it. (See particularly Epistle to the Galatians, chaps. i1., ili, 
and iv.) This Equity is not to be Lawlessness, but a newer and 
more perfect Law. 

In this as in other points Shakespeare intended Shylock to embody 
the Jewish spirit as he conceived it. Similarly Portia’s position is 
not less clearly thought out nor less subtly maintained, as we shall 
see when we reach its final development. But, once more, we must 
be on our guard against supposing that Shakespeare’s chief object 
was to illustrate two opposing philosophical views. His purpose was 
to portray Shylock and Portia truthfully. (See Appendix ‘On the 
Meaning of the Play’.) 


212. It must not be. Portia’s refusal to ‘wrest the law’ here 


104 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. [Act IV. 


reminds us of her saying in i. 2. 92, ‘‘If I live to be as old_as Sibylla, 
I will die as chaste as Diana, unless I be obtained by the manner of 
my father’s will”. Compare also ill. 2. 12. 

217. A Daniel come to judgement! refers to a story in the 
Apocrypha, in which Daniel is narrated to have delivered, by his 
shrewdness, a woman suffering under false accusation. 

219. Let me look upon the bond. Portia goes concisely, but 
gradually to her point. She wishes (i) to give full opportunity to 
both sides to ‘say their say’, (ii) to prove to the uttermost that 
Shylock’s aim was, not the recovery of his losses, but the ‘ judicial 
murder’ of Antonio. 


241-243, z.c. the scope of the law certainly includes the exaction 
of a forfeit, whatever that forfeit may be. In this case there is no 
doubt that the forfeit is clearly described in the bond. 


245. more elder. Double signs for the comparative and superla- 
tive degrees of adjectives are common in Shakespeare, ¢.g.: 


‘This was the most unkindest cut of all” 
(Julius Caesar, iii. 2. 187). 


249. Are there balance? See Abbott, §471. The plural and 
possessive of nouns in which the singular ends in a sibilant, such as 
“s’, ‘se’, ‘ce’, &c., are frequently written without the additional 
syllable, e.g. Sonset cxil.: 

“‘my adder’s sense 
To critic and to flatterer stopped ave”. 


258. I am arm’d, z.¢. ‘with a quietness of spirit’ (line 12). 

266. of such misery. As the line stands, ‘misery’ must be read 
with the stress accent on the second syllable. But there is doubtless 
a monosyllable, such as ‘slow’ or ‘sad’, dropped out, by printer’s 
error, after ‘such’. 

269. Observe the beautiful rhythm in this monosyllabic line. 

271. a love, used of a friend here, as in iii. 4. 7, 13, 17. 


277. Which, referring to ‘a wife’. ‘Which’ was often applied 
to persons (as ‘ who’ to things) in Tudor English, cf. : 


‘* The mistress which I serve”, Zempest, iii. 1. 6. 
(Adbdott, § 265.) 


280. Bassanio is not to be taken literally in his readiness to sacrifice 
his wife. He is expressing his feelings with exaggerated force. The 
passage amuses the audience in the theatre, who have almost forgotten 
Portia in the Judge, and have been moved by the sad reality of 
Antonio’s farewell. The situation is full of ‘irony’, but the irony is 
comic, not tragic. Gratiano and Nerissa extend the relief for a 
moment longer. 


292. pursue, accented on the js? syllable. 


Scene 1.] NOTES. 105 


298. A sentence! Come, prepare! Here, as Irving acts the 
part, Shylock makes a spring at Antonio, in front of whom Bassanio 
flings himself. 


300. This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood. 
Portia’s judgment has given rise to great controversy among the 
critics. A full account of the controversy is given in Furness’ 
Variorum Edition. 

It must be remembered that Shakespeare did not zzvent the 
judgment, but took it from the old story in // Pecorone. 

It has been pointed out that Portia’s interpretation overlooks the 
general understanding ‘‘ that the right to doa certain act confers the 
right to the necessary incidents of that act”, e.g. that the right to cut 
a piece off a melon, confers the right to spill some of its juice. 

But to appeal to such a general understanding is to appeal to a 
principle of common sense or equity, which is not ‘nominated in the 
bond’; therefore Shylock has no more right to invoke it, than Portia 
had a right to compel him to provide a surgeon for Antonio at his 
own cost. 

The judgment is an ancient and traditional one, and is far indeed 
from being a mere quibble. It belongs to an exceedingly important 
class of decisions, by which, under the guise of extreme severity, 
equity was introduced into law, without injury to its stability. Such 
judgments struck the common imagination deeply because of the 
cleverness with which the law was saved from defeating its own pur- 
pose, and causing injustice. The judgment of Solomon is one instance; 
another is that of the judge who, being called upon to punish a man 
for having killed a youth’s father by accidentally falling from a high 
window upon him, bade the youth go and fall out of the same 
window on the defendant—a means of redress which the youth 
naturally declined to accept. 

In later times such decisions became ‘bad law’, merely because 
law had absorbed so much of the spirit of equity. 


[In connection with the notes on lines 86 and 200 above, as to 
the similarity of Shylock’s position to that of the Pharisees, it is 
interesting to remember that St. Paul’s refutation of the ‘ Judaizers’ 
of his time was, in essence, the same as that of the judgment here. 
If the letter of the law is to be invoked, it must be invoked in every 
detail and in every particular (‘‘thou art a debtor to the whole law”’), 
which is seen immediately to be impracticable, since no man cax 
keep it with absolute precision. The new ‘spirit’, however, does 
not defeat or subvert the law, it fulfils it and completes it, and so 
saves the law itself from self-destruction. ] 


Shakespeare is careful to add to the old solution a further point of 
his own (‘‘ the law has yet another hold”), viz., that the bond was 
an alien’s attempt to murder a citizen, and therefore, zfso facto, 
criminal. 

325. estimation, z.¢. on the scales, ‘weight’. 


106 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. [Act IV. 


328. on the hip. See note oni. 3. 40. 


329. Why doth the Jew pause? He is hesitating whether to 
choose his revenge or his life, unconscious that, should he still 
resolve to take his pound of flesh, the young judge had ‘another 
hold on him’. 

336. barely. Note the effectiveness of the metrical form here. 


340. stay question, as above, ii. 8. 40, ‘stay the riping of the 
time’, where ‘stay’= ‘wait for’, and compare the colloquialism to 
“stop supper’ (Dickens, Pickwick Papers, ch. xxvi.). 

347. seize, legal term=take lawful possession of. 


367. Ay, for the state, not for Antonio, seems to mean that 
the half which is forfeited to Antonio must become his, while the 
court has power to commute the state’s half for a fine. 


374. There is some little difficulty in following the disposition 
made by Antonio. But the difficulty is lessened by reading a comma, 
as in the text, instead of a semicolon, as in the ‘Globe’ edition, after 
‘content’. The words then appear to mean: ‘If it please the 
court to remit the fine in respect of that half of his goods which is 
due to the state, Iam content to give the other half,—if I may in 
the meantime have the use of it as capital,—on Shylock’s death, to 
Jessica and her husband’, Thus Shylock would keep one half of 
his goods, while Antonio would trade with the other half during 
Shylock’s lifetime. At his death, the sum-total of his property 
would pass to Lorenzo and Jessica. 

390. I am not well. This passage, with the lines 367-371 
above, excites our pity for Shylock. He goes out. We hear the 
crowd howl at him at the door of the court, and then he disappears 
from our knowledge. We know, however, that he signed the deed 
in favour of Lorenzo and Jessica (see Act v. 1. 265). But what 
became of him? Each of us may have his idea. It would make a 
good subject for an essay or ‘study’. That his treatment would 
seem merciful in Shakespeare’s time, there can be no doubt. That 
Shakespeare himself approved of it, we have no evidence to show. 
On the stage, great actors like Kean and Irving have taken it for 
granted that we are to pity him, and have made his exit miserably 
sad to see. 


392. The twelve godfathers are the twelve jurymen. Such a 
reference to purely English institutions is of a piece with the mention 
of a ‘charter’ in the case of Venice. See note on iii. 2. 276. 

395. I entreat you home, verb of motion implied, as above, 
‘Father, in’, ii. 2. 141, and line 397 below, ‘I must away’. 

396 contains another obsolete use of the preposition ‘of’ to be 
added to a collection of such in this play. See also ‘of force’ in 
line 415 below. 

398. presently =immediately, as above, 381, and ii. 6. 65; ii. 9. 3. 

400. gratify, thank and reward. 


Act V.] NOTES. 107 


405. three thousand ducats. The payment of a fee by the 
winning side to a judge or referee seems, to modern ideas, a danger- 
ous form of corruption, but it was quite regular in old days. Here 
the Duke himself recommends a reward of some kind. See further 
J. T. Doyle’s note in Furness’ Variorum Edition, p. 417. 

415. of force I must, I am necessarily obliged. 

425. to give you this, z.e. by giving you this. So ini. 1. 126, 

make moan /o be abridged’, means ‘a¢ being abridged’. Abbott, 
Shakesp. Gr., § 356. ; 

426. methinks. In this phrase ‘thinks’ is an impersonal verb 
meaning ‘seems’, while ‘me’ is dative case. 

439. An if. This ‘an’ is the conjunction ‘and’, as it is often 
spelt. For an explanation of the use, see Abbott, Shakesp. Gr., §§ 
IOI-103. 

445. commandment is to be pronounced as a quadrisyllable. 
It is written ‘commandement?’ in the First Folio. Abbott compares 
I Henry V1.,i. 3. 20, ‘‘ From him I have express command(e)ment”” 


Scene 2. 


More of the adventure of the rings. 


6. upon more advice, after more thought. So ‘advised’= 
careful, thoughtful, i. 1. 140, &c. 


16. old swearing, ‘old’ is used in its familiar, jocular application 
(as in such phrases as ‘old boy’, ‘old girl’, &c.)—not confined to 
schoolboys in Shakespeare’s time. So Sir Thomas North, in trans- 
lating the Lzfe of Alexander the Great, writes ‘* At this feast there 
was o/d drinking”. Cp. also Macéeth, ii. 3.2, and Much Ado, v. 2. 98. 


Act V. 


Of the home-coming of Portia and Bassanio,; how he brings the 
Merchant with him from Venice; and of the end of the adventure of 
the rings. 


The scene is the avenue to Portia’s house. Around is the garden, 
** full of tall shrubs and lofty trees,—the tulip tree, the poplar, and 
the cedar.. There are terraces and flights of steps, cascades and 
fountains, broad walks, avenues, and ridings, with alcoves and 
banqueting-houses in the rich architecture of Venice.” 

Lorenzo and Jessica are waiting for the return of their friends. 
The interval is filled with talk that richly interprets ‘‘ soft stillness 
and the night”, and with music played by Portia’s musicians ‘‘ of 
the house”. 

Shakespeare does not usually end a play—in the modern fashion 
—on its culminating sensation, nor send his audience away with their 
heart in their mouth. He winds his threads of story quietly off. 
(See the close, for instances, of Ham/et and of Romeo and Jultet.) 


108 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. [Act V. 


He adds here a consummately beautiful picture of tranquillity and 
happiness, necessary to restore the balance of the comedy, after the 
anguish of the trial scene. 

1. In such a night. These miniature pictures of three ‘star- 
crossed lovers’ and of the witch Medea embody the secrecy, the 
passion, and the sadness of a moonlit night. 

The detail of the pictures is Shakespeare’s own, but the persons, 
as Hunter shows, were probably suggested to him by Chaucer’s 
Troilus and Cressida and Legend of Good Women, in the latter of 
which Thisbe, Dido, and Medea follow one another. 

1o. stood Dido. This is perhaps the most beautiful of the series 
of pictures. Whether or no Shakespeare read Virgil, he was fond 
of Dido, and several times refers to her. He believed she was re- 
conciled to Aineas in the after-world: 

‘* Dido and her Aineas shall want troops 
And all the haunt be ours” (Azz. and Cleop., iv. 14. 53). 
willow, the token of unrequited or forsaken love. 

12, Medea gather’d. The description of the herbs and other 
charms with which Medea renewed the youth of Atson, the old 
father of Jason, is to be found in Ovid, Metamorphoses, book vii. : 

“* Addidit exceptas Lune de nocte pruinas”, &c. 

Lichas, Midas, Hercules’ rescue of Hesione, Orpheus, all figure in 
the Metamorphoses. It seems as if Shakespeare had the book fresh 
in his mind when he wrote the Merchant. 

22. outnight, like ‘ outface’ in iv. 2. 17. 

28. Stephano: to be pronounced here with the a long. In the 
Tempest it is pronounced correctly, with the a short. 

31. by holy crosses, such as are still to be seen in Roman 
Catholic countries by the roadside. 

46. post, z.c. a messenger, so called from the ‘ posts’ or stations 
fixed at regular intervals along the main roads, where change of 
horses, &c., could be obtained. 

49. Sweet soul. Printed, in defiance of reason and rhythm, as 
part of the clown’s speech, by all the early editions. The correction 
was first made by Rowe. See Appendix on the Text. 

56. creep in: ‘in’ for ‘into’, frequent in Shakespeare. Cf. 
Richard I//., i. 2. 261: 

‘* But first I’ll turn yon fellow zz his grave”. 


57. touches, notes. 

59. patines, small plates of gold in which the consecrated wafer 
or bread is presented to communicants. 

60. According to ancient theories of astronomy, the planets and 
stars were fixed in eight concentric spheres which revolved about the 
earth, making, as they moved, the music of a perfect diapason. 


Act V.] NOTES. 109 


There are numberless references in English poetry to this ‘music of 
the spheres’. In this passage the conception is rather different: it 
is the stars themselves, not the spheres, that sing; and it is possible, 
as has been suggested, that Shakespeare had /od, xxxviii. 7 in his 
mind: ‘‘ When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of 
God shouted for joy”. 

62. still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins. One of the 
most magical lines in Shakespeare. ‘Young-eyed’ may be illustrated 
from Sir Joshua Reynolds’ famous picture of cherub-faces. The line 
recalls, in subject as in beauty, Horatio’s farewell to Hamlet— 

‘* Good-night, sweet prince, 
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest”. 


65. close us in. Rowe’s emendation for ‘close in it’, of Q1 
and Ff., and ‘close it in’ of Q2. It is plain that the ‘it’ at the 
end of the line has confused the printers. The meaning, or the part 
of it that can be expressed in prose, is: Immortal souls thus are full 
of a music which we mortals, while we are so thickly clad in perish- 
able clay, are not able to hear. ‘Grossly’ conveys the double idea 
of thickness and insensibility. 


66. wake Diana, that is, rouse the moon, which has now gone 
behind a cloud, and is asleep, as it were. The scene is not meant 
to be flooded with clear moonlight throughout. See also line 92 
below. Further on again there is an indication that the moon is 
shining once more. What is the indication? 


73. Note the effectiveness of the metrical form here. 
77. a mutual stand, a general halt, as if by agreement. 


78. Both savage and modest have slightly different senses here 
from their modern use. ‘Savage’ means ‘wild’, as a wild rose is 
‘rose sauvage’ in French. There is no implication of cruelty in the 
word. ‘Modest’, again, is not ‘humble’, but ‘orderly’ or ‘docile’. 
The Shakespearean meanings are thus nearer to the original ‘ silva- 
ticus’ and ‘ modestus’. 


7g. the poet. Ovid, in Metamorphoses, books x. and xi., tells 
the tale of Orpheus. But there may very likely be a reference here 
to Virgil’s account of the legend in the fourth book of the Georgizcs. 
What other references to Orpheus do you know of in Shakespeare? 
What in Milton? 


80. drew, in the same sense as ‘ draw’ above, line 68. 
82. his, the old possessive form of ‘it’. Compare line 61 above. 


85. is fit for treasons. Like Cassius, the typical conspirator 
(Julius Cesar, i. 2. 200 ff.), ‘he hears no music’. 

These lines are sometimes quoted—like many others of the poet’s 
—as if they expressed Shakespeare’s own opinion. But the words 
are Lorenzo’s. ‘*Let no such man be trusted”, seems to have 
irritated the commentator Steevens: see his long note quoted in 

(330) K 


110 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. [Act V. 


Furness’ Variorum Edition. Instances to the contrary might be 
cited: Sir Walter Scott, Dr. Johnson, Dean Hook, Dean Stanley; 
good men who could not distinguish one tune from another. 


87. Erebus, the covered place, the under-world, ‘dim region of 
dead corpses’. 


88. Mark the music. Zxter Portia and Neritssa. 

Portia is still full of the strong emotions roused in her by the 
trial; on her way home she has talked with the hermit, and prayed 
. at the wayside crosses. For a while her reflections are grave and 
serious. She stands above Jessica and Lorenzo, and talks ear t to 
Nerissa, while the music plays. 


98. Music of the house, that is, a band of musicians. 


g9. good without respect, z.¢. without reference to circum- 
stances. 

107. Good things miss their final flavour of perfection unless they 
are well-timed. There is a play on the double sense of ‘ season’. 


109. Endymion, who slept an eternal sleep on the side of Mount 
Latmus, kissed by the rays of the moon. 


121. tucket, a note or strain on a trumpet. Ital. ¢occatta. 


127. day with the Antipodes, that is, daylight during the night 
2s well as the day. 


130. a light wife, a fickle wife, punned here with ‘light’ the 
opposite of heavy 3 as in the foregoing line it is punned with ‘light’ 
in the sense of ‘ brightness’. Portia, as we have seen before, makes 
skilful use of puns at moments when her friends might feel con- 
strained or embarrassed. Her play on ‘ bound’, six lines below, is 
an admirable instance of the cleverness with which she manages to 
be grateful without being formal or tiresome. 


141. z.¢. I cut short the politeness of mere words. For ‘ breath- 
ing’, Malone compares ‘mouth-honour, drveath’ from Macbeth, v. 3. 
27. Compare also in this play ii. 9. 89, ‘‘ commends and courteous 
breath”. 


147. cutler’s poetry, the doggerel engraved on knife-blades. 
154. respective, scrupulous, careful. 


160. a little scrubbed boy, short or stunted like a scrub or 
shrub (two forms of the same word, cf. ‘Wormwood Scrubs’). The 
comic ‘irony’ is delightful in this contemptuous description of 
Nerissa to her own self. ‘A prating boy’ (‘plauderbube’, as 
Schlegel turns it) is excellent from Gratiano, who had at last found 
someone that could outtalk him. Compare Lorenzo’s complaint, 
bile tog, 


170-2. What difference do you note between the Shakespearean 
and the modern uses of ‘leave’ and ‘ masters’ in these lines? 


Act V.] NOTES. . III 


175. I were best, a confusion between two constructions: 
(i) ‘ Me were best ’=it would be best for me 
[as ‘ you were best’ in ii. 8. 33=it would be best for you], 

and (ii) ‘I had best’. 
A different form of the same confusion occurs in Richard I].— 

** Me rather had my heart might feel your love 

Than my unpleas’d eye see your courtesy” (iii. 3. 192, 193). 

*I were best’ is a case where the ‘ psychological subject’, z.¢. the 
person who is chief in the thought, has become, in spite of rule, the 
grammatical subject, chief in the grammar also. See Jespersen, 
Progress in Language, § 180, and Abbott, S%. Gr, § 230. 


197. contain, keep. 


199. much unreasonable, it is odd that we now only use ‘much’ 
in this adverbial way with adjectives of the comparative or superla- 
tive degree, ¢.g. ‘much older’, ‘much the oldest’, but not ‘much 
old’. So, again, we say ‘‘I will come very likely’’, but not “I 
will come likely” (a Scotticism). 

199-202. Portia, in her pretended anger, clips the connecting 
links between the clauses. ‘Who is there so unreasonable (as to) 
have lacked good manners (to such an extent as) to press for a thing 
regarded by its owner as sacred?’ 


206. civil doctor, a doctor of civil law. 


212. enforced, morally obliged; compare what Bassanio had 
said to the doctor— 
“* Dear sir, of force I must attempt you further” (iv. I. 415). 
213. beset with shame and courtesy, ‘courtesy’ the desire 
to show gratitude, ‘shame’ the desire not to seem ungrateful; the 
negative and positive poles of the same feeling. 


216. candles of the night, stars, just as Banquo, in Macbeth, 
says of a cloudy night, ‘* There’s husbandry in heaven; their candles 
are all out”. 

236. which, refers to ‘ body’, not to ‘ wealth’. 

239. advisedly, deliberately. 

242. swear to keep this ring. Note, in point of dramatic con- 
struction, that the incident of the rings is not a mere ‘ excrescence’ 
on the plot, but serves to bring about the recognition and explana- 
tion at the close with more spirit and humour than would have been 
possible by any other device. 


249. as soon as you. See note at the beginning of Act iii. sc. 4. 


251. Antonio, you are welcome. Portia has revealed herself 
now as Doctor Balthasar of Rome, and she welcomes Antonio once 
again in her double character. 

Here is the crowning point of the play. The Merchant of Venice 
recognizes in the heroine of the caskets the heroine of the bond, his 


112 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. [Act V. 


own deliverer in the wife of his dearest friend; here we learn that 
his ‘ argosies with portly sail’, in the fate of which we were interested 
at the opening of the play (i. I. 9), have come richly to harbour; 
here also the romance of the flight of the miser’s daughter comes to 
a comfortable end; by Portia’s care her future fortune is assured. 


259. living=property, as in iil. 2. 158. 
261. road, compare i. I. 19. 


267. manna, one more reference toa Bible story. How many 
other such references can you recall from the play? 

271. inter’gatories, a clipped form of ‘interrogatories’, questions 
which a witness was sworn to give true replies to; a phrase, as Lord 
Campbell telis us, that belongs to the Court of Queen’s Bench, 
Portia speaks once more as the ‘ Civil Doctor’. 


APPENDIX A. 


HEV LEST. 


Beginners in Shakespearean study need not concern them- 
selves with minute questions of textual criticism, but it is 
important they should know some preliminary points. 

We have good reason for thinking that in many obscurely- 
worded passages of Shakespeare, the obscurity arises from 
the fact that we have not got the words as he wrote them. 

Half his plays were not printed at all during his lifetime. 
The other half show no traces of having been printed under 
his supervision or with his correction. 

The plays printed during his lifetime were printed singly 
and in quarto size (called guarto because each page is of the 
size of the fourth part of a full sheet of foolscap). The first 
collected edition of the plays was printed in 1623, seven 
years after Shakespeare’s death, and was edited by two fellow- 
actors of his, Heminge and Condell. This edition is known 
as the First Folio (called Folzo because each page has the 
full length of a foolscap sheet or /ea/). 

The Merchant of Venice is one of the plays printed in 
Shakespeare’s lifetime. Two Quarto editions of the play 
appeared, both in 1600; one certainly, and the other almost 
certainly, printed by J. Roberts. The edition known as the 
First Quarto was not only printed but also pudlished by J. 
Roberts. The so-called Second Quarto was published by 
Thomas Heyes. 

The play was not printed again until it appeared in the 
First Folio, 1623.1 

Even nowadays when elementary schools, machine-print- 
ing, and systematic revision of proofs have greatly reduced 
the number of printers’ errors, an editor finds much to correct 
before a book can be published. But in Shakespeare’s time, 
when spelling was so uncertain, when printing was often 
done by ill-educated journeymen with insufficient type at 


1 These three editions are known to critics by the symbols Q!, Q2, F1. 
(M 330) H 


114 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 


their own houses, when authors were indifferent as to how 
their plays appeared or whether they appeared at all, it is not 
wonderful to find editions full of mistakes in punctuation, 
spelling, grammar, and sense. 

It might be thought, however, that where there are three 
early editions (as in the case of Zhe Merchant of Venice) one 
would serve to correct another. In printing from manu- 
script, different printers would make different mistakes, but 
in each instance probably one at least would preserve the 
true version. 

Unhappily this does not prove to be the fact. The three 
editions often contain in the same form what is manifestly 
a printer’s blunder, e.g. in ili. 4. 49, ‘ Mantua’ for ‘ Padua’, 
and in ii. 7. 69, ‘Gilded timber’ for ‘Gilded tombs’, and 
in punctuation, 11. 7. 18, ‘This casket threatens men that 
hazard all’ for ‘This casket threatens. Men that hazard 
all’. [See also Notes on ii. 1. 35; iv. 1. 50.] 

These cases show that the three editions are really one 
edition. They are not independent sources from which we 
can derive a text by comparison, but are printed one from 
another. The variations which do occur (and there are 
hundreds of them, chiefly slight) are only so many more 
proofs of general inaccuracy. 

Under these circumstances, Shakespearean scholars and 
editors have in many places had to exercise their own judg- 
ment in endeavouring to restore the words of the play as 
Shakespeare wrote them. Such an attempted restoration is 
called a ‘conjectural emendation’. The most famous of all 
Shakespearean emendations is one in the description of 
Falstaff’s death in Henry V. where ‘a table of green frieze’ 
has been altered into ‘’a babbled of green fields’. This 
emendation is due to Theobald, who edited Shakespeare 
early in the eighteenth century. Other famous commentators 
on the text of Shakespeare are Rowe, Pope, Capell, Johnson, 
Steevens, Malone, Dyce, and Collier. 

The emendations of these different scholars and critics, 
along with the readings of the early editions, are printed in 
the ‘Cambridge’ edition, and in Furness’ ‘Variorum’ edition, 
so that the student has there the materials for making up 
his own mind as to what Shakespeare wrote in the disputed 
passages. . 

In this edition the text of the ‘Globe’! edition, as reprinted 


1 Edited by Clark & Wright, the editors of the ‘Cambridge’ edition and the 
‘Clarendon Press’ edition of Shakespeare. 


APPENDIX A. 115 


in 1887, has been mainly followed. Necessary omissions 
have been made, and a few alterations, of which the chief 
are these: 

ii. 7. 40—Omit hyphen between ‘mortal’ and ‘breathing’, 
inserted first by Dyce. The curiously parallel phrase 
in Richard I11,, iv. 4. 26, ‘mortal living ghost’, shows 
the hyphen to be unnecessary. 

iil, 2, 111—Print as one line, ‘O love, be moderate, allay 
thy ecstasy’. 

ili. 2. 112—‘rain thy joy’ with the Ff, not ‘rein’ as in 
Globe ed. 

iii, 2. 163‘ happier, then, in this’ for ‘happier than this’ 
with F2, &c. 

iii, 2. 165!‘ Happiest of all in’ for ‘Happiest of all is’, 
with Collier, ed. 2. 

lii, 2. 201—Punctuate with Theobald. No stop at ‘inter- 
mission ’, 

ili. 2. 217—‘Salanio’ for ‘Salerio’, with Rowe, and so 
throughout. 

iii. 2, 317—-Punctuate as suggested by Charles Kemble. 

iii, 3. 26, 28, 29—-Punctuate and emend as suggested in 
Theobald’s letter to Warburton (see /urness, p. 171). 

iii, 4. 53—“‘traject’ for ‘tranect’ with Rowe. 

iii. 5. 52, 53—the reading ‘meane it, it’ of the Folios should 
be ‘merit it’, and ‘Is’ should be ‘’T is’ (S. Walker). 

iv. I, 125—‘ inexorable’ with F3. 

iv. 1. 323—‘ Of’ for ‘Or’ with Keightley. 

iv. I. 376—Punctuate with Johnson. 

iv. I. 383—“‘ possess’d of’ with Capell, as in v. 1. 266. 

v. 1. 65—‘us in’ for ‘it in’ with Rowe, ed. 2. 

v. I. 167—Omit ‘so’ before ‘riveted’. It has come in 
from the last line but one. 


1 As a proof that ‘in’ and ‘is’ are exchanged by printers even in a careful 
modern book, see p. 65 of the 1870 edition of Mrs. Jameson’s Characteristics of 


Women, where— 
‘* which to term in gross 
Is an unlesson’d girl” 
is printed— 
‘* which to term is gross 
Is an unlesson’d girl”. 

For an amusing instance of a typical printer’s error, see leading article in the 
Daily News, London, 24th December, 1896, where a phrase (used by Mr. Glad- 
stone of book-collecting) ‘‘ quirks and eccentricities”: is quoted as ‘‘ quicksand 
eccentricities ”. 


116 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 


APPENDIX B. 


PROSODY. 


1. Metre and Rhythm.—Fully to enjoy reading Shake- 
speare, whether to oneself or aloud, it is necessary to feel the 
effect of his use of etre. 

Metre is one form of rhythm. The nature of rhythm may 
be understood by a comparison of dancing with walking. 
In walking, the movement comes, as we say, ‘anyhow’, 
without system or scheme. But in dancing there occurs 
from time to time among the steps a more emphatic step, 
made with a special s¢vess or beat or accent. ‘This accented 
step returns so regularly as to divide the movements of the 
dancer into groups occupying equal times. The motion thus 
becomes periodic, and the periods are marked by a pulsation, 
or recurrence of stress. Such periodicity is called rhythm. 
Alike in dance, in verse, and in music, rhythm is a necessary 
element. 

Rhythm in uttered speech, if so precise as to be reducible 
to a formula or scheme, is called mefre. Rhythm, of a less 
regular kind, is also found in prose, especially in oratorical 
prose. But metre is proper to verse only. 

2. Blank Verse.—The metre used by Shakespeare for the 
main body of his plays is called Blank Verse. In this, 
rhythm is produced by an alternation of stressed and un- 
stressed syllables, as in the word ago’. A pair of syllables, 
the second of which carries the metrical stress, is called an 
‘iambus’, or an ‘iambic foot’. If the stress falls on the 
first of the two syllables, the foot is said to be a ‘trochee’. 
In Blank Verse the first are grouped in sets or ‘lines’ of 
five. A line of five iambic feet is called an ‘iambic penta- 
meter’, ¢.2.— 


"Tis nine’ o'clock’: our friends’ all stay’ for you’. 
No masque’ to-night’: the wind’ is come’ about’, 


These are normal Blank Verse lines; or unrhymed Iambic 
Pentameters. 

3. Cautions to be observed in Reading Verse.—It is to be 
earefully noted here that though the metrical stresses, as 
metrical, have all the same value, yet neither the above lines 
nor any others in Shakespeare are to be vead with five equal 
stresses. The reason for this caution lies in the fact that 


APPENDIX B. 117 


there is emphasis as well as metrical stress to be expressed, 
and that the amount of the emphasis depends on the impor- 
tance of each word to the meaning of the sentence. Thus 
on the word “nine” there is not only a metrical stress equal 
to that on “clock”, but also an emphasis of meaning which 
makes it necessary to utter the former much more forcibly 
than the latter. Similarly, the metrical accent on the last 
syllable of ‘Jessica’ may be the same as on the first, but the 
accent of English pronunciation puts a strong stress on the 
first and only a weak or secondary stress on the last. 

Another equally important caution in reading is that the 
words must be grouped by their phrases, not divided at the 
ends of the feet. It is one of the chief beauties of good verse 
that the phrase-groups, into which the words fall, do not 
coincide with the metrical groups of feet and lines, but form, 
as it were, patterns of their own upon the pattern of the 
metre. It is in this counterplay between the metre and the 
sense that the charm of versification lies. From this it fol- 
lows as a practical corollary that to read verse well one must 
so mark the rhythm as not to injure the sense, and so render 
the sense as not to spoilthe rhythm. Thus the ends of the 
lines must always be indicated, but where there is no pause 
in the sense, the pause in the rhythm must be so brief as not 
to impair the continuity of the meaning. Similarly the 
metrical beat must always be rendered, but along with it 
the accent required by pronunciation and the emphasis 
demanded by the sense must be so clearly given as to pre- 
vent the ‘sing-song’ or ‘see-saw’ effect produced by reading 
lines simply according to their scansion. So also while, 
considered metrically, the time of all Blank Verse lines is 
equal, the metrical effect is not impaired by differences of 
time in actual reading, if, and so far as, these differences are 
accounted for by something in the thought or feeling ex- 
pressed by the various lines. 

4. Prose Passages.—More than one-fifth of The Merchant 
of Venice is written in prose. The transition from verse to 
prose or from prose to verse is often made within the limits 
of the same scene (¢.g. i. I. 112-120, 1. 3. I-33, &c. &c.). 
The principle on which the change is made is so subtle, that 
it does not admit of being formulated except in very general 
terms. It holds good that passages where the tone of the 
dialogue is light, and free from strong feeling, are usually in 
prose. Thus Launcelot never! speaks in blank verse, but 


1 As evidence that blank verse was felt to be unsuited to the expression of 
“casual” talk, see what Jaques says to Orlando when he changes to it from 


118 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 


(except for a few lines of rhymed doggerel) uses prose only. 
The confidential talk between Portia and her lady-in-waiting 
isin prose. Inthe second scene of Act ii., Bassanio’s replies 
in blank verse to Launcelot’s pieces of prose, give an im- 
pression of good-humoured Dignity talking to Impudence. 
On the other hand Shylock speaks in prose, not only in his 
meditations on matters of business (i. 3. I-33), but also in his 
most passionate denunciations of Jessica and Antonio, and 
even in his great assertion of the human nature of Jews 
(iii. 1.), while, in the Trial Scene, his speeches are entirely in 
Blank Verse. Perhaps we shall not be wrong in concluding 
that while blank verse was felt to be unsuitable to the talk 
of clowns or to familiar ‘chat’ of any kind, prose was used 
not only in these cases, but also for the sake of variety or 
contrast in passages of every mood of feeling. The reason 
for the transition will be found in the circumstances of each 
case, but often we can say no more than that the change 
is itself the object aimed at, and that therefore the same 
effect would have been produced by an alteration from prose 
to verse as is got by one from verse to prose. 

5. Heroic Couplets.—Besides this introduction of Prose, 
other means are taken to vary the Blank Verse. Sometimes 
the lines are rhymed in ‘ couplets’, called, to distinguish them 
from Lyric Metres, ‘ Heroic Couplets’. This device is used 
in The Merchant of Venice for two main purposes :— 

(i) To mark the close of a scene or the exit of one of the 
dramatis persone (ii. 6. 58, 59, and 67, 68). Here the rhyme 
has the effect, as it were, of the striking of a little bell. 

(ii). To give point to an epigram or proverb, that ‘clenches’ 
an argument, or sums up a point of view. There is an 
excellent instance of this in ii. 9. 80, and following lines— 


O these deliberate fools! when they do choose, 
They have the wisdom by their wit to lose. 


To which Nerissa replies— 


The ancient saying is no heresy, 
Hanging and wiving goes by destiny. 


In two notable places in iii. 2. there occur sequences of 
couplets, spoken first by Portia, second by Bassanio (108-113 
and 140-149), where the effect of the musical chime is to 
enhance the strong emotions of relief and joy felt by both 


prose, ‘‘Nay, then, God be wi’ you, an you talk in blank verse,” As You 
Like It, iv. 1. 31. 


APPENDIX B. 119 


when the crisis is happily past. (See also the ‘quatrain’ of 
pentameter lines at the close of the same scene.) 


6. Decreasing use of Rhyme by Shakespeare.—But Shake- 
speare used rhymed couplets less and less, the more ex- 
perienced he grew, during the course of twenty-two years, in 
writing for the stage. In the earliest comedies, for instance 
in Love's Labour’s Lost, there is so great a proportion of 
rhymed couplets to blank verse as to show that he was in 
doubt which of the two forms of metre was the more suited 
to drama. At this early period he was also writing poems, 
such as Venus and Adonis, which are rhymed throughout. 
As he gradually discarded rhyme in his plays, there came an 
alteration in the style of his blank verse. So vitally con- 
nected are these two changes that we can best understand 
them by treating them together. This treatment will also 
best enable us to realize some of the more obvious and mea- 
surable characteristics of the versification of 7he Merchant of 
Venice. 


7. Effects of Rhyming on the Style of Versification.—The 
change, then, in metrical style in Shakespeare’s plays, is a 
progressive relinquishment of rhyme and of those features in 
verse which are fostered by rhyming, particularly by rhyming 
in couplets. 

How does Rhyming in Couplets affect Verse? Read, and 
listen to, these couplets by Pope, the great master of that 
form of metre— 


For forms of government let fools contest, 
Whate’er is best administer’d, is best: 

For moods of faith let graceless zealots fight, 
His can’t be wrong, whose life is in the right, 
In Faith and Hope the world will disagree, 
But all mankind’s concern is Charity. 


Here you will notice the effect of rhyme is threefold :— 


i. By inducing the ear to listen for the close of the lines, 
and by making a couplet a whole in itself, Rayme has a 
tendency 


(a) To bring the sense-pauses to the end of the lines. 

(6) To make final words important. 

ii. By calling attention to the correspondence and echo 
between one line and another, Rhyme tends to regulate or 
formalize metre, ze. by making one similarity Se Nara it 
encourages others. 


120 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 


iii. Rhyme limits the possibilities of sentence-construction, 
and—by causing one line to answer another—favours a style 
of epigrammatic contrast. 

It is natural, then, that in the earliest comedies, we should 
find, in connection with abundant use of rhyme, certain char- 
acteristics in the Blank Verse, which may be summed up as 
—an even and somewhat formal rhythm, almost exclusively 
iambic, with sense-pauses regularly placed at the end of lines. 

8. The Blank Verse of ‘“‘The Merchant of Venice” marked 
by Flexibility.—In The Merchant of Venice, written when 
Shakespeare had been at work some seven or eight years, we 
find certain changes in versification which give it greater 
flexibility and freedom. The structure of the sentence, as it 
were, outgrows and overlaps the metrical framework, wreath- 
ing and twining about it ‘like a rose upon a trellis’. 

g. Freer Treatment of the End of the Line. — These 
changes may thus be classified :— 


(a) The sense-pauses are not so regularly placed at the 
ends of lines, but are distributed over different parts, and 
thus greater variety and greater continuity are given to the 
verse. 

(6) An unaccented syllable occurs frequently at the end of 
the fifth foot in a line, so making the ending double or 
feminine, as it is technically called. Sometimes there are 
two such extra syllables, particularly in the case of proper 
names, ¢.g.— 


I would have stay’d till I had made you merry. 
To furnish thee to Belmont, to fair Portia. 

And I must freely have the half of anything. 
How doth that royal merchant, good Antonio? 
But who comes here? Lorenzo and his infidel? 


By partly filling the line-pause, this device links the lines 
together. 

(c) A similar effect, in linking the lines together, is pro- 
duced by putting a lightly-accented monosyllable under the 
last metrical stress in a line, e.g.— 


In such a place, such sum or sums as are 
Express’d in the condition (i. 3. 136). 


‘A cur can lend three thousand ducats?’ or 
Shall I bend low (i. 3. 112). 


Shakespeare became increasingly fond of this device (see 


APPENDIX B. 121 


Dowden, Shakespeare Primer, p. 41), but it is very rare in 
The Merchant of Venice. 
10. Varied Rhythm. 


(a) Trochees are commonly used, especially just after a 
pause or at the beginning of a line. 


Gao’ler, look’ to him: tell’ not me’ of mer’cy. 

On’ly my blood’ speaks’ to you’ in my veins’. 

Must give’—for what’? for lead’? ha’zard for lead’ ? 
Emp'ties itself’, as doth’ an in’land brook’. 


The trochee produces a specially characteristic effect in the 
last foot in the line. 


Have all | his ven | tures failed? | What, not | one’ hit? (iii. 2. 264). 
I know’ | the hand’: | in faith’ | ’tis’ a | fair’ hand (ii. 4. 12). 

At Grat’ | ian’ | o’s lodg’ | ing, some’ | hour’ hence (ii. 4. 26). 

Did I’ | deserve’ | no more’ | than’ a | fool's’ head? (ii. ix. 59). 


When a trochee comes at the beginning of a line, and an 
extra syllable at the end, the character of the rhythm seems 
quite altered, e.g.— 


This’ is the pent’-house un’der which’ Loren’zo 
Sit’, like his grand’sire, cut’ in al’abas’ter ; 


(which have just the rhythm of “ Need’y knife-grind’er, whither 
art’ thou go’ing ?”) 


(4) Syllables of equal emphatic value are placed together 
so that the effect of a sfondee is produced (ze. of a foot of 
two syllables equally accented)— 


To my’ | heart’s’ hope’! | Gold’; sil’ | ver, and’ | base lead’ (ii. 9. 20). 
The moon’ | shines’ bright’: | in such a night as this (v. 1. 1). 

And they’ | did make’ | no’ noise’ | in such a night (v. 1. 3). 

Sit’, Jess’ | ica’. | Look’ how the floor of heaven (v. 1. 58). 

Did feign’ that Or’pheus drew’ trees’, Stones’, and floods’ (v. 1. 80). 


Notice the particularly happy effect of this variation in the 
line— 
And, when I ope my lips, let no dog bark! (i. 1. 94). 


(c) In cases where there is a sense-pause elsewhere than 
at the end of a line, the same advantage is taken of it to 
admit one or even two extra syllables. These extra syllables 


122 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 


occupy part of the time mentally allotted to the pause, and 
are therefore said to be ‘hypermetric’ or outside the metre. 
But, like the. feminine endings, they produce a subtle varia- 
tion on the character of the rhythm. The student should 
carefully collect for himself all instances of ‘internal hyper- 
metric syllables’. Neglect of them may spoil reading. 
Here are some typical cases :— 


My Lord’ Bassan’ | zo, since’ you | have found’ | Anton’ | zo (i. 1. 69). 
By be’ | ing pee’ | vzsh? I tell’ | thee what’, | Anto’ | zo (i. 1. 86). 
Exact’! | the pen’ | alty. 

Why, look’ | you, how’ | you storm’ (1. 3. 127). 
Which pries’ | not’ to | the inte’ | xo, but’, like’ | the mart’ | Ze?, 2 

li. g. 28). 

Without’ | the stamp’ | of mer’ | z#? Let none’ | presume’ i Bi fi 
Were not’ | derived’ | corrupt’ | Zy, and’ that | clear hon! | ozr (ii. 9. 42). 
I lose’ | your com’ | Zany: there’fore | forbear | awhile’ (iii. 2. 3). 
O love’ | be mod’ | erate; allay’ | thy ec’ | stasy’ (iii. 2. r1z). 
How could’ | he see’ | to do’ | them? Hav’'ing | made one’ (iii. 2. 124). 
Fad’ing | in mus’ | zc: that’ the compar’ | ison’ 
May stand’ | more prop’ | ev, my eye’ | shall be’ | the stream’ (iii. 2. 45-6). 
To entrap’ | the wis’ | est, there’fore | thou gau’ | dy gold’ (iii. 2. 107). 
Defy’ the mat’ | zey. How cheerst’ | thou Jess’ | ica’? (iii. 5. 45) 


Such ‘hypermetric syllables’ are specially common where 
a line is divided between two speakers, because here the 
reader or hearer allows for a special pause. See the instance 
_ quoted above from i. 3., and compare with it— 


To come’ | again’ | to Car’ | thage. 
In such’ | a night’ (v. 1. 12). 


(dq) The above case of extra syllables before pauses, must 
be distinguished from instances where two syllables lightly 
and quickly pronounced are counted as occupying the time 
of one. 


The prod’ | igal Chris’ | tian. Jess’ | ica’, | my girl’. 
The con’ | tinent’ | and sum’ | mary of’ | my for’tune. 
E’ven in | the force’ | and road’ | of cas’ | ualty’. 


In such instances the light vowels should not be slurred or 
omitted in reading, for then the variety! in rhythm that 


1 This variety may be be used to convey a special effect, as in Tennyson's 
“€ Myriads of rivulets hurrying through the lawn”. 


APPENDIX B. 123 


should be produced by them is lost. Moreover they occur 
in cases where it is wholly impossible to omit them, e.g.— 


All broken implements of a ruined house (7%mon of Athens, iv. 2. 16), 


where the third foot must be read either as a tribrach (three 
unaccented syllables) or as an anapzest (two unaccented fol- 
lowed by one accented syllable); or perhaps the fourth foot 
may be an anapeest. 

The light pronunciation of some vowels in Elizabethan 
English makes it possible to understand how ‘ ocean’ can be 
scanned as in i. 1. 8— 


Your mind is tossing on | the oc’ | ean’, 

or ‘marriage’ as in— 

To woo a maid in way { of marr’ | iage’ (ii. g. 13), 
or ‘interest’ in— 

And what of him? did he | take int’ | erest’? (i. 3. 69). 
compared with— 

Was this inserted to | make in’ | terest good’ | (i. 3. 84). 
or Portia in the two lines— 


Her name is Portia; nothing undervalued 
To Cato’s daughter, Brutus’ Portia. 


Similarly while ‘ Antonio’ is in some cases scanned as a full 
quadrisyllable, in others the last two syllables are to be 
uttered so quickly as only to take the time of one. (Compare 
i. I. 73 with i. 1. 69.) Compare also— 


With pur’ | pose to’ | be dressed’ | in an’ | opin’ | ion (i. x. 91) 


with— 


With this’ | fool gudg’ | eon, this’ | opin’ | ion’ (i. 1. 102). 


In like manner, the first two syllables of Gratiano only count 
as taking the time of one in i. I. 77, but ini. 1. 107 the word 
is a full quadrisyllable. 

The same word may even be differently ‘ timed’ in different 
places in the same line, ¢.g.— 


A se’ | cond Dan’ | iel’, | a Da’ | niel, Jew’ | (iv. 1. 327). 
And so’, | though yours’, | not’ yours: Prove’ | it so’ (iii. 2. 20). 


124 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 


The terminations -szom, and -tion, are often allowed the time 
of two syllables, e.g.— 


Before’ | a friend’ | of this’ | descrip’ | tion’, 
You’ loved, | I’ loved, | for in’ | termiss’ | ion’, 


and in the words imposition, preparation, occasion, perfection, 
contemplation, and others in this play. 

On the other hand they often have the time of only one 
syllable, 2.g.— 


Hath come’ | so near’ | crea’ | tion? Move’ | these eyes’? 
Of this’ | fair man’ | sion, mas’ | ter of’ | my ser’ | vants. 


A few other cases of words timed in a manner different 
from modern usage may be quoted, ¢.g.— 


There is’ | no pow’ | er in’ | the tongue’ | of man’ (iv. 1. 235). 
Shall lose’ | a ha’ | ir by’ | Bassan’ | io’s fault’ (iii. 2. 299). 
Do yow’ | desi’ | re? Rest | you fair’, | good sign’ | ior (i. 3. 53). 


Caution. At this point falls to be mentioned a point which 
requires careful attention. Neglect of it is a common cause 
of bad reading. The termination -ed has in Shakespeare 
very often the time of a full syllable, e.g.— 


The self-same way with more | advi’ | sed watch’. 
The French’ | and Eng’ | lish there’ | miscar’ | ried’. 
Can al’ | ter a’ | decree’ | estab’ | lished’, &c. &c. 


Failure to notice this ruins the metre of the line. Similar 
caution is needed to observe the old pronunciation ‘com- 
mandement’, iv. I. 451, and ‘aspéct’, ii. 1. 8. 

II. Incomplete Lines. 

Certain other variations in the even flow of the Blank 
Verse arise from the fact that Shakespeare’s words were 
written to be spoken, with action and gesture. Part of the 
time of a line may be filled by a significant pause, which has 
the value of a ‘rest’ in musical time, e.g.— 

As far | as Bel | mont. 

— | In such | a night | (v. 1. 17). 
And ne’er | a true | one 

— | In such | a night (v. i. 20). 
That she’ | did give’ | me — | whose po’ | sy was’ (v. 1. 146). 
I'll wait’ | as long’ | for you’ | then. — | Approach (ii. 6. 24). 


Such pauses may sometimes be filled with a movement or 


APPENDIX B. 128 


gesture. For instance, when Bassanio is opening the leaden 
casket, we find the linedivided between Portioand Bassanio— 


For fear | I sur | feit ! 
— | What find’ | I here’? 


So when Morocco picks up the leaden casket to examine its 
inscription, we have the incomplete verse— 


What says this leaden casket ? 


Salutes and bows may well fill up the time left by the short 
lines in 1. 1.65, and 72. See also ii. 2. 158, 187; li. 3. 9; ii. 4. 
27, 6. 28, 9. 83, &c., where ‘stage business’ of some kind, 
such as the exit of a person or the drawing of a curtain, 
occupies the pause in the rhythm. This helps us to under- 
stand why there are so many incomplete lines in Shake- 
speare’s dramas, while there are none in a narrative poem 
like Milton’s Paradise Lost. 


12. Other Metres. 
Other forms of metre besides the Iambic Pentameter 
occur in 7he Merchant of Venice, of which the chief are— 


(a) Anapestic (that is, a rhythm of which the characteristic 
foot consists of two unaccented followed by one accented 
syllable ; as in Wordsworth’s “At the corner of Wood Street, 
when daylight appears”), ¢.g.— 


Thanks, i’ faith’ | for si’ | lence is on’ | ly commend’ | able (i. 1, 111). 


Whiles we shut’ | the gates’ | upon one’ | wooer, ano’ | ther knocks’ | at 
the door’ (i. 2, 116). 


(0) Alexandrine, of six iambic feet, or Iambic Hexameter. 
This is found in the inscription on the three caskets, 


‘Who choo’ | seth me’, | shall get’ | as much’ | as he’ | deserves’”’, 


and in odd lines, here and there, e.g.— 


Because you are not sad. Now by two-headed Janus (i. 1. 50). 
To find the other forth; and by adventuring both (i. 1. 143). 
What many men desire! that many may be meant (ii. 9. 25). 

I will assume desert. Give mea key for this (ii. 9. 51). 

Desired us to make stand. His hour is almost past (ii. 6. 2). 
What, is Antonio here? Ready, so please your grace (iv. 1. 1). 


In all these cases of single Alexandrines there is a pause 
almost in the middle of the line, and the second half seems 
to be finished with only casual reference to the first. 

(330) ii 


126 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 


(c) Short Zyvz¢ metres, as for the scrolls found within the 
caskets. These vary between lines of four trochees, the last 
of which is cut off at the accented syllable, ¢.g.— 

All’ that | glis’ters | is’ not | gold’, 
Of’ten | have’ you | heard’ that | told’. 
There’ will | come’ a | Chris’tian | by’ 
Will’ be | worth’ a | Jew’ess’ | eye’. 


and lines of four iambic feet— 
Your ans’ | wer had’ | not been’ | inscrolled’. 


The one song that occurs in the play, viz., “Tell me where 
is fancy bred”, is composed in a similar way, of mingled 
iambic and trochaic lines. 


APPENDIX C. 
THE ‘MEANING’ OF THE PLAY. 


The ‘meaning’ of a work of art is all that it suggests, 
whether of feeling or of thought, to those who study it. Its 
‘true meaning’ is that which it has for a student perfectly 
fitted to enjoy and understand it. If the work of art be great 
and the student apt, the suggestions which it makes to him 
will be rich and manifold beyond his power of statement, and 
will keep on increasing in volume and in interest as his 
experience of life and of art becomes greater. Thus it isa 
commonplace to hear people say that the more they ‘go 
through’, the more they ‘see in Shakespeare’. Even such 
a line as Antonio’s— 


‘Say how I loved you. Speak me fair in death ’, 


though it is in words of one syllable, ‘means’ more to some 
than to others. So does the beautiful picture drawn in the 


lines in Act v.— 
“She doth stray about 
By holy crosses, where she kneels and prays 
For happy wedlock hours’’. 


Still more is this true of the play asa whole. Its meaning 
lives and grows, nourishing, and nourished by, the rest of 
experience. 


APPENDIX C. 127 


No formula or maxim or ‘view of life’ can be an adequate 
rendering of the meaning of a poem. At the best it can only 
give a part of its meaning, for the value of poetry, as of music 
and of painting, consists just in this, that it expresses by its 
special means what cannot be so well expressed in any other 
way. That part of the meaning of a poem which can be 
adequately rendered in prose is, therefore, just that part 
which is least characteristically poetic. 

If this be realized, and if we further guard ourselves from 
the dangerous belief that the ‘moral’ which we disengage 
from the poetry is the core or central point round which the 
poet himself worked in composing the play, it will not be 
unsafe to try to state some ideas as conspicuously prominent 
in it. 

1. Love and friendship.—Companionship, as the main thing 
in life, seems a vital part of the story of the play. It appears 
under the two main forms of friendship and love. Shake- 
speare does not, in word, distinguish the two, but speaks of 
Antonio as a ‘true lover’ of Bassanio (see iii. 4. 7; iv. I. 271). 
With Antonio friendship is a pursuit, a fine art— 


‘«The dearest friend to me, the kindest man, 
The best-condition’d and unwearied spirit 
In doing courtesies, and one in whom 
The ancient Roman honour more appears 
Than any that draws breath in Italy”. 


This heroic passion appears in another form in Portia. She 
also has, in this respect, something of the ‘antique Roman’ 
in her; and in spirit and loyalty does not fall short of “ Cato’s 
daughter, Brutus’ Portia”. She loves Bassanio so truly that 
she ‘loves’ his ‘honour more’. The sacrifice she makes in 
sending him off in an instant, at a time when there was every 
selfish motive for delay, becomes heroic from the gaiety and 
grace with which she covers the generosity of her sympathy. 
In the court of justice these two forms of companionship ° 
appear together. Antonio there offers the last proof of love, 
and is ready to give his life for his friend; Portia, with a 
brilliant activity not less moving than his dignified passive- 
ness, rescues him by her wit and courage. The last act sets 
companionship in the richest frame of poetry and humour, 
and shows the very stars in harmony with it. In contrast 
to Antonio and Portia, with their troops of friends, stands 
the lonely figure of Shylock, who isolates himself from human 
kindness. 


2. Conflict between the letter and the spirit of law.—Some 


128 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 


critics have seen in the play an illustration of two different 
ways of treating law. According to these critics, Shylock 
represents the Hebraic idea that right consists in the fulfil- 
ment of the letter of law. Thus when he says— 


‘‘What judgement shall I dread, doing no wrong?” 


he interprets ‘wrong’ to mean ‘a violation of written enact- 
ment’. So, too, he replies to Portia’s saying, “Then must 
the Jew be merciful” (by which she means ‘he ought to be 
merciful’, or ‘it would be better if he were merciful’), by “On 
what compulsion must 1?” refusing to recognize any principle 
but a legal one. And he sums up his case by declaring, “ I 
stand here for aw”. 

On the other side Portia represents the idea of equity. 
This does not mean laxity of interpretation. For instance, 
she regards her father’s will as completely binding upon her- 
self, and refuses to tamper with it even to secure her dearest 
wishes. So, again, she declines to ‘wrest the law’ against 
Shylock, and declares that, for the sake of the state, contracts 
must be upheld. Yet she so far represents the equitable in- 
terpretations, common in Roman law, that, by something not 
unlike a legal fiction, she saves the spirit by pushing the letter 
to extreme. As by the old maxim ‘ swmmum jus’ may be 
‘summa injurta’, she restores the balance by an interpreta- 
tion so rigid as to make execution impossible. 

A pleasant example of the principle appears in her treat- 
ment of the compact between herself and Bassanio in the 
matter of the ring. Here Bassanio directly breaks the letter 
of his pledge. But he is true to its spirit. To believe that 
Portia would be angry with him for giving the ring to the 
saviour of Antonio would have been a case of the ‘ugly 
treason of mistrust’; it would have shown a doubt of her 
good sense and temper. In this way, of course, she takes 
his conduct, and it is easy to see under her pretended anger 
that she likes him all the better for showing living confidence 
instead of mechanical and formal adherence to the letter of 
their compact. 

3. The evil of usury.—Other critics have thought the play 
to be meant as an attack on the practice of usury. There is 
nothing, however, to show that any special stress is laid on 
this point by Shakespeare. Antonio’s principle that the loan 
of money should never be made upon a ‘business consider- 
ation’ appears to rest on a confusion between two quite 
different sorts of loans: (1) those made to ‘a friend in need’. 
(2) those made in the regular way of commercial transaction, 


APPENDIX C. 129 


In early days of trade, when business was confined to a few 
people in each centre, there was practically no distinction 
between the two, and then the taking of usury seemed to be 
a mean advantage on a friend’s necessities. But afterwards, 
when commerce began to be international, and to be carried 
on in enormously greater volume, a ‘money market’ and a 
system of regular loans came to be an essential part of the 
machinery of trade. To confine financial transactions to a 
merchant’s circle of personal friends would now be as incon- 
venient as it would be to abolish the system of public hotels 
and to leave all travellers to the chances of private hospitality. 
‘Friendly loans’, as Polonius pointed out, are apt to turn out 
badly both for business and friendship. 


4. Different ways of using wealth.—The German critic 
Gervinus regards the play as illustrating different ideas of the 
value of wealth. Thus Shylock pursues it for its own sake, 
or for the sake of the power which it gives him over other 
men. He ends not only by cutting himself off altogether 
from his kind, but by losing all his property, except such as 
is given back to him in pity by his enemies. Jessica, by a 
natural reaction, punishes the miserliness of her father by a 
childish wastefulness, flings his money about, and exchanges 
a valuable turquoise ring fora monkey. Antonio is magnifi- 
cently generous in his use of wealth, regards as its chief value 
the power which it confers of helping a friend in need, and yet 
allows himself to appear so over-anxious that he comes in for 
the wise rebuke of the light-headed Gratiano— 


‘* You have too much respect upon the world, 
They lose it, that do buy it with much care”. 


Portia’s wooers fail in the riddle of the caskets from a shallow 
view of the comparative values of things, and are taught by 
experience that “all that glisters is not gold”, but that folly 
and death may lie under precious metals. Bassanio gives an 
instance of the most difficult kind of high-mindedness about 
money, frankness in accepting a loan or a gift. With Portia 
he represents the just view of wealth, that it is a mighty help 
to pleasurable living, and that for the sake of friends one 
cannot have too much of it (iii. 2. 156). Yet that it is simply 
not comparable to the really important things in life, such as 
friendship and love, for which it, must be freely given and 
hazarded (ili. 2. 304). 


There are many other views of the ‘meaning’ of the play, 
some of which it is good practice to try to work out for one- 


130 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 


self, e.g. that it illustrates the contrast between the shows of 
things and their reality, Bassanio’s speech over the caskets 
being taken as the ‘key-note’ to the whole play. These 
different interpretations show how much there is in the plays 
of Shakespeare, and that the ‘morals’ drawn from them are 
as various as those from life itself. But they all start from 
the assumption that he wrote ‘ with a purpose’, in the narrow 
sense of the phrase, whereas it seems that ‘the purpose of 
his playing’ ought not to be defined otherwise than in 
Hamlet’s description of it, “to hold the mirror up to nature”. 


GLOSSARY: 


abode (ii. 6. 21), stay, or delay; 
not, as in modern use, the place 
of such stay. 


accoutred (iii. 4. 63), arrayed. 
Der. from Old French accoustrer, 
of uncertain origin, but most 
probably from custor, secondary 
form of cwustos, in the special 
sense of a verger. Thus ‘accoutre’ 
would originally mean to array in 
ecclesiastical garments. 


advised (i. 1. 142; ii. 1. 42, &c.), 
thoughtful, deliberate, careful. 
‘Advice’ meant ‘opinion’, or 
‘thought’, not necessarily ‘coun- 
sel offered to another’. ‘Ad- 
vise’ meant ‘to reflect’ as well as 
‘to offer an opinion’ in Eliza- 
bethan English. 


albeit (ii. vi. 27)=though it be 
the case that, notwithstanding. 
‘Al’ is found by itself in Chaucer 
in the sense of ‘although’. 


amity (iii. 4. 3), friendship. Fr. 
amitié, Lat. amicitia. 


an (ii. 4. 10, &c.) is another 
form of the copulative conjunction 
‘and’, used conditionally, like the 
cognate word in Scandinavian dia- 
lect. ‘An’ was gradually differ- 
entiated in use from ‘and’, like 
‘to’ from ‘too’. When this con- 
ditional sense of ‘and’ became 
obscure and half-forgotten, the 
word was ‘reduplicated’ by the 
addition of ‘if’, in ‘an if’ or ‘and 
if’, e.g. Authorized Version of St. 
Matt., xxiv. 48. Vide Abbott, 
§§ 101, 102, 103. 


anon (ii. 2. 105), in one mo- 
ment, immediately; der. from ‘on’ 
and ‘one’. 

argosy (i. I. 9; i. 3. 15), a mer- 
chant vessel. Skeat agrees with 
Clark and Wright in deriving the 
word from the name of Jason’s 
famous ship, the 47go, rather than 
from agosie, a ship of Ragusa. 
But see the article in the Mew 
English Dictionary, ed. Dr. Mur- 
ray, where evidence for the latter 
derivation is given. 


bate (ili. 3. 32; iv. 1. 69), a 
shortened form of ‘abate’, mean- 
ing to ‘beat down’, or ‘diminish’. 
Der. from aédattre, which is French 
for the Low Lat. ad-batuere. 

bechanced (i. 1. 38), participle 
of ‘bechance’, meaning ‘to occur’, 
‘befall’. 

beholding (i. 3. 95). 
on the passage. 

beshrew (ii. 6. 52, &c.), verb, 
to call plague upon something; 
often playfully used, as when 
Portia says to Bassanio, ‘‘ Be- 
shrew your eyes’’=plague upon 
your eyes. Der. from ‘shrew’= 
scolding, cutting, harmful. 


betimes (ili. 1. 17), adverb, 
early... Der. from ‘by’, prepo- 
sition, and ‘time’. Formerly ‘ be- 
time’. The ‘s’ is added on the 
analogy of adverbs like ‘whiles , 
‘needs’, &c., where the possessive 
case is used adverbially. A similar 
false analogy has formed ‘besides’ 
for ‘beside’. 


See note 


132 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 


bootless (iii. 3. 20), profitless. 
Der. from A.S. &4é¢=profit, con- 
nected with the comparative det-zer. 


bottom (i. 1. 42), strictly the 
lower part of a ship, the hull 
below water-line; then, generally, 
a ship carrying cargo. 

bound (i. 3. 15). See note on 
the passage. 


catercousins (ii. 2. 117), friends, 
a familiar term answering to the 
modern ‘chums’. ‘The origin of 
the word is obscure, but it most 
probably means those who were 
related or connected, by being 
‘catered-for’ together, table-mates, 
just as ‘companion’ means, by 
derivation, one who eats bread 
with another. The old derivation 
from guatre is almost certainly 
wrong. See the article in Mew 
English Dictionary, by Dr. Mur- 
ray, who compares a passage from 
a translation of Terence (pubd. 
1598), in which ¢zzmcitia est inter 
éos is rendered ‘‘ They are not now 
cater cousins’’. 

cerecloth (ii. 7. 51), literally, a 
waxed cloth used in the embalming 
of bodies; so, generally, a wind- 
ing-sheet. Lat. cera=wax. 


ceremony (v. 1. 202), a sacred 
symbol, regarded with special awe. 
For its use in this concrete sense, 
compare Julius C@sar, i. 1. 70, 
‘‘Disrobe the images, If you do 
find them deck’d with ceremonies”. 

cheer (iii. 2. 310), subst. =as- 
pect, or expression, look, mien. 
Der. from Low Lat. cara, a face or 
countenance. From this original 
sense flow the meanings ‘glad- 
ness’, ‘hospitality’, ‘fare’, &c. 

cheer (iii. 2. 235), verb=to en- 
courage, comfort, bid welcome. 
Der. from above (iii. v. 45). ‘ How 
cheerst thou?’ =how dost thou fare? 


close (ii. 6. 47), adject., secret, 
concealing. 


commodity (i. 1. 178), an article. 


of commerce or merchandise, op- 


posed to money, as goods to cur- 
rency; compare: ‘‘Some tender 
money to me, Some offer me com- 
modities to buy ”.— Comedy of 
Errors, iv. 3. 6. 

complexion (iii. 1. 25), the tem- 
perament, or ‘blend of humours’, 
the disposition or natural bent. 
So in Auch Ado, ii. 1. 305,‘ jealous 
complexion’. Compare its use in 
passage quoted from Howell, in 
the note on i. 1. ror. It occurs 
in its modern sense, i. 2. 113. 

compromised (i. 3. 72), agreed, 
z.e. having come to terms. 

conceit (i. 1. 92; iii. 4. 2, &c.). 
See note on iii. 4. 2. 

condition (i. 2. 112), temper 
disposition. So in Chaucer’, 
Knight's Tale: 


‘* He was so gentil of his condicioun 
That thurghout al the court was his 
renoun ”; 


and compare ‘best-condition’d’, 
iii. 2, 291. 

confiscate (iv. 1. 305), for con- 
fiscated, like ‘consecrate’ for ‘con- 
secrated’, &c. The Latin ’termin- 
ation expresses the participial force 
without addition of -ed. . Abbott, 


§ 342: e eee 

continent (iii. 2. 131), subst., 
that which holds or contains. 

conveniency (iv. 1. 79), promp- 
titude, suitable to circumstances, 

convenient (iii. iv. 56), prompt 
for occasion. 

cope (iv. 1. 406), verb, to re- 
quite or meet. (Compare ‘re- 
coup’.) Der. from Fr. couger. 


counterfeit (iii. 2. 115), subst., 
an imitation or picture, without 
any sense of ‘spurious’ or ‘fraudu- 
lent’ as in modern uses. So the 
adject. the ‘counterfeit present- 
ment of two brothers’ in Hamlet. 

cozen (ii. 9. 38), verb, to cheat 
or defraud. Dr. Murray compares 
French cousiner, explained by Cot- 
grave (1611) ‘‘to clayme kindred 
for aduantage or particular ends”. 
So that the word would mean ‘te 


GLOSSARY. 


beguile under pretext of cousin- 
ship’. This derivation is, how- 
ever, far from certain. 

crisped (iii. 2. 92), partic. of 
the verb ‘to crisp’, meaning to 
‘curl into short, stiff, wavy folds’. 
Der. from Lat. crispare, to crimp. 


disabling (ii. 7. 30), verbal sub- 
stantive= disparagement, or lower- 
ing. 

doit (i. 3. 130), subst., a small 
copper coin, worth the eighth of 
a ‘stiver’, formerly current in the 
Netherlands. The word itself is 
Dutch, 

ducat (i. 3. 1, &c.), a gold coin, 
in use, formerly, in several coun- 
tries of Europe. It usually con- 
tained a weight of gold rather less 
than that of the modern half-sove- 
reign. Its name is derived from 
the ducatus or ‘duchy’ of Apulia, 
where it was first coined. ; 

dulcet (iii. 2. 51), adj., sweet. 
Der. from Old French doucet or 
dolcet, formed with diminutive 
terminative -e¢, from doux, Lat. 
dulcis, 


eaning-time (i. 3. 77), the 
lambing season. The old A.S. 
word ednian, ‘to bring forth 
young’, from which it is derived, 
is connected with ‘eke’, below. 

eanling (i. 3.73), a young lamb. 

eke (iii. 2. 23), verb, to augment, 
increase. Cognate with Latin 
augere, 

(a) full of hate. 
(4) hatred; nearer 

in meaning than 
the modern words 
to the Latin zz- 
vidtiosus, invidia, 
from which they 
are derived. 

ergo (ii. 2. 50), conjunct. =there- 
fore, used by Launcelot Gobbo to 
show off his learning. 

excrement (iii. 2. 87), hair; not 
derived from excerno in this sense, 


envious (2) 
(iii. 2. 280), 

envy (2) (iv. 
I. 123), subs., 


133 


but from excresco, and so=out- 
growth. It appears in the sense 
of ‘hair’ also in Comedy of Errors, 


geno. 


_ fall (i. 3. 78), verb, used transi- 
tively=to drop. 

fear (ii. 1. 9), verb causative= 
to frighten; (iii. 2. 29)=to be 
anxious about, fear for. Cf. iii. 


5. 2. 

fill-horse (ii. 2. 100), a horse 
that works in shafts. ‘Fill’ is a 
dialectic form of ‘thill’, a shaft. 
Compare Zyvozlus and Cressida, 
iii. 2. 48. 

fond (ii. 9. 27; iii. 3. 9)=foolish. 
‘* Fonned (the older form of the 
word), the past part. of the verb 
fonnen, to act foolishly” (Skeat). 
Compare with the double sense of 
‘doting’. 

fraught (ii. 8. 30), the past part. 
of an obsolete verb frahten=to 
lade a ship with cargo. 

frutify (ii. 2. 120), a blunder of 
Launcelot Gobbo’s, perhaps meant 
for ‘fructify’, in the sense of to 
bring forth fruit, or metaphori- 
cally, to discourse. 

fulsome (i. 3. 76), adj., pro- 
ductive. 


gaberdine (i. 3. 102, &c.), a 
loose outer gown or frock. The 
word comes through the Spanish 
from a Celtic origin, and is con- 
nected with ‘cabin’, and ‘cape’ 
or ‘cope’; the idea of shelter or 
covering being common to all. 

gaged (i. 1. 130), under pledge 
or obligation. ‘Gage’ and ‘wage’ 
are the same words (compare 
guard and ward, guerreand war), 
derived from Low Lat. vadium, 
or wadium, a pledge. 

gear (i. 1. 110; ii. 11. 150); for 
this gear=for the nonce, for this 
occasion. ‘Gear’ means ‘dress, 
harness, tackle’. 

go to (i. 3. 105, &c.) has the same 
sense as the modern ‘come, come’, 


134 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 


‘**To’ is still used adverbially in 
expressions such as ‘heave to’. 
‘Go’ did not, in Elizabethan Eng- 
lish, necessarily imply motion from, 
but motion generally’’ (Abbott, 
§ 185). 

gormandise (ii. 5. 3), to eat 
greedily, like a gourmand or 
glutton. Derivation unknown. 


gramercy (ii. 2. 108), many 
thanks. Fr. grand merci. 


gratify (iv. 1. 400), to thank, 
reward. 

gross (i. 
total sum. 

guarded (ii. 2. 139), ornamented 
with ‘guards’ or facings. Com- 
pare, ‘‘Rhymes are guards on 
wanton Cupid’s hose” (Love's 
Labour’s Lost, iv. 3. 58). 

guiled (iii. 2. 97), full of guile, 
as disdain’d=full of disdain, in 
‘‘jeering and disdain’d contempt ” 
(ri flenry JVs 13. tea) 


3. ‘49, ‘&e.), subst., 


hovel-post (ii. 2. 60), a post 
or prop that sustains a hovel or 
shanty. 


husbandry (iii. 4. 25), control 
or management of a house. A 
‘husband’ is originally an inhabi- 
tant or master of a house, a house- 
holder. It thus answers to oizovépos, 
and ‘husbandry’ to cixevojie, econ- 
omy. 


imposition (i. 2. 90; iii. 4. 33), 
a stated condition. 
passage, it rather has the meaning 
of a ‘task’. 

intermission (iii. 2. 201), ces- 
sation, delay; compare ‘‘Cut short 
all intermission” (AZacbeth, iv. 3. 
232). 


knap (iii. 1. 8), verb=gnaw, 
nibble; so used by Cotgrave(whose 
dictionary was published in 1611) 
to translate vonger [‘‘to gnaw, 
knap, or nible off’’]. 


In the second. 


lading (iii. 1. 3), subst., a cargo, 
or loading of a ship. 

level (i. 2. 33), vb., to aim at, 
shoot at, and so, to guess at. 

liberal (ii. 2. 168), free, careless 
in behaviour. See note on the 


place. 
lieu.(iv. 1. 404); in the phrase 
‘in lieu, of" = in wrecum 700, . 


‘Lieu’ is derived from J/ocus, a 
place. |‘ Lieutenant’, therefore, 
is a kind of docum-tenens. | 


magnifico (iii. 2. 278),a grandee. 

manage (iii. 4. 25), subst., means 
originally the ‘handling’ (from 
Lat. manus, a hand) or control 
of a horse; then ‘management’ in 
general. 

marry (ii. 2. 35, &c.), interjec- 
tion or expletive, from Marie or 
Mary. 

martlet (ii. 9. 28), a diminutive 
of ‘martin’, which is a general 
name given to the Hirundinide, 
or birds of the swallow tribe. 


moe (i. 1. 108). See note on the 
place. . 

moiety (iv. 1. 26), a half, a 
portion. Derived from the Latin 
medvetas, through French moztzé. 


neat (i. 1. 112) comes from an 
old neuter substantive zed¢, mean- 
ing Ox or cow. 

needs (iii. 3. 14), adverb=neces- 
sarily. The final -s is an adverbial 
ending, ‘‘originally due to A.S. 
genitive cases in -es”. (Skeat.) 

nice (ii. 1. 14), adj., dainty, fas- 
tidious. Schmidt cites a passage 
that illustrates this one: ‘‘ 2zce 
affections wavering stood”, from 
A Lover's Complaint. Compare 
also ‘‘sharp occasions which lay 
nice manners by”, AdZ’s Well, v. 
i. 15. Derived from Lat. mesczus. 
See the curious article in Skeat’s 
Dictionary. 

notary (i. 3. 133), a writer or 
lawyer, who from the ‘notes’ fur- 


GLOSSARY. 


nished by his clients drew out con- 
tracts and deeds in legal form. 


ostent (ii. 2. 179; ii. 8. 44), out- 
ward behaviour, manner, bearing. 


pack (ii. 2. 9), to set out, to 
‘bundle off’; properly, to make 
one’s things up for a journey. 


pageant (i. 1. 11), a spectacle, 
a show, derived from the Latin 
aria, in the sense of a ‘‘ move- 

able scaffold, such as was used in 
the representation of the old mys- 
teries”. See the interesting article 
in Skeat’s Dictionary. 

parcel (i. 2. 93), a group or set, 
a ‘parcel of wooers’. The word 
is a doublet of ‘particle’, and 
meant ‘a small portion’. Now 
used only of a ‘packet’. [For its 
use here we may compare ‘‘I think 
the English a parcel of brutes”. 
Miss Burney, Zve/ina. | 

parts (ii. 2. 165), qualities. 

party-coloured(i. 3. 78), motley, 
dappled. Der. from farvize, a part. 

patch (ii. 5. 45), a name given 
to fools and jesters, from their 
‘motley’ dress. 


patines (v. 1. 59), a plate of 
metal for the bread in the Eucharist. 
Derived from Greek raray4. 

peize (iii. 2. 22), to hold in a 
balance, to keep suspended, and 
so to delay. The word is a doublet 
of ‘poise’, and is derived, through 
French Zeser, from Latin pensare. 


pent-house (ii. 6. 1), a shed pro- 
jecting froma building. Reference 
to Skeat shows that the modern 
spelling of the word is due to false 
derivation. [Compare ‘crayfish’, 
‘sovereign’, &c.| The word was 
formerly ‘pentice’, or ‘appen- 
tice’; from Latin appendicium, an 
appendage or ‘annexe’; it was 
mistakenly connected with French 
pente, a slope, and ‘house’, as if 
it meant ‘a house with a sloping 
roof’. 


135 


pilled (i. 3. 75), another form 
of ‘peeled’. ‘‘Jacob took him 
rods of green poplar, and pilled 
white strakes in them” (Gem. xxx. 
37). The two verbs, ‘peel’, to 
strip off the skin (#eZ/zs), and ‘pill’, 
to strip or plunder (#z/are), were 
confused with one another. 


port (i. 1. 124, &c.), behaviour, 
deportment, bearing (‘ carriage’ in 
a metaphorical sense). In iii. 2.79, 
‘‘magnificoes of greatest porvt”’, it 
means ‘rank’ or ‘position’, 

portly (i. 1. 9), stately in move- 
ment, majestic. 


possessed (i. 3. 58; iv. 1. 35), 
informed. To ‘possess’ the mind 
with something is to fill or occupy 
it; so, by itself, ‘possess’ = in- 
struct. 

presently (iv. 1. 381, &c.), im- 
mediately. 

prest (i. 1. 160), ready, prompt. 
Derived through French /7é¢ (i.e. 
prest) from Latin praeste. Com- 
pare Prologue to Act IV. of Pericles 
of T: baby line 45, ‘‘ Prest for this 
blow’ 


quaint (iii. 4. 69); ‘quaint lies’, 
that is, lies carefully arranged or 
‘made up’, ‘artistic’, An exa- 
mination of the passages cited by 
Schmidt will show that ‘quaint’ 
in Shakespeare means ‘tasteful’, 
‘trim’, ‘out of the common’, but 
not (as now) ‘queer’ or ‘grotesque’. 
Derived through old French cozné, 
from Lat. cognztus. 


quaintly (ii. 4. 6), 
artistically. 

quality=(i) style or manner 
(iii. 2. 6); (ii) manners or accom- 
plishments (ii. 7. 33); (iii) virtue or 
faculty (iv. 1. 178). 

quest (i. 1. 172), pursuit, enter- 
prise. 


tastefully, 


racked (i. 1. 181), stretched to 
the uttermost. 


reason (ii. 8. 27), verb, to talk, 
converse. Compare Richard L1/., 


136 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 


iil. 3. 39, ‘‘You cannot veason al- 
most with a man that looks not 
heavily ”’. 

redoubted (iii. 2. 88), feared, or 
formidable. 

regreets (ii. 9. 88), greetings, 
salutations. ‘The prefix ve- has no 
force here, unless it is an intensive 
force. So the verb ‘‘regreet”’ 
simply=salute, in Richard //., i. 
3. 67. 

rehearsed (iv. 1. 356), pro- 
nounced, proclaimed. Nowadays 
the word has become ‘specialized’, 
and is applied only to the prelimi- 
nary practising of a musical or dra- 
matic performance. By derivation 
it means ‘to harrow over again’; 
so, metaphorically, to repeat. 

remorse (iv. 1. 20), compassion. 
This is its usual sense in Shake- 
speare. Compare ‘‘the tears of 
softremorse”’ (King John, iv. 3. 50). 

respect (a) (i. 1. 74), considera- 


tion; (2) (ii. 2. 174), care, thought- . 


fulness; (c) (v. I. 99), ‘‘ nothing is 
good without respect”, z.e. without 
reference to circumstances. No- 
thing is ‘absolutely’ good. 


respective (v. 1. 154), careful 
of obligation, conscientious. 

rib (ii. 7. 51), verb, to inclose 
as with ribs. 


scant (ii. 1. 17; v. 1. 141), verb, 
to restrict, confine. 

scrubbed (v. 1. 160); see note 
on the passage. 

self (i. 1. 148), adject.=same. 
Compare the German sedéder. 

sensible (z)=sensitive (ii. 8. 48); 
(2)=substantial, tangible (ii. 9. 88). 

shrewd (iii. 2. 241), biting, cut- 
ting, painful. Compare the ballad 
phrase, ‘‘shrewd blows”. The 
modern sense of the word may be 
paralleled from the metaphorical 
usage of ‘keen’, ‘sharp’, and 
‘acute’. For derivation see ‘ Be- 
shrew’, above. 


shrive (i. 2. 113), to confess, in 


the sense in which a priest ‘con- 
fesses ’’ one who declares his faults. 

sirrah (i. 2. 115, &c.), an ex- 
tension of ‘sir’, used in a familiar 
or contemptuous sense. 


skipping (ii. 2. 170), lively, vola- 
tile. 


slubber (ii. 8. 39), to do care- 
lessly, to sully. [So Othedlo, i. 3. 
227, ‘‘slubber the gloss of your 
new fortunes with this more stub- 
born expedition”.] The word is 
Scandinavian in origin, and is 
connected with ‘slop’, ‘slobber’, 
‘slaver’, &c. 

sonties (ii. 2. 38), apparently 
for ‘saints’, or ‘sanctities’. 

sooth (i. 1. 1, &c.), truth. The 
word is by origin the present part. 
of an old Teutonic verb ‘As’, 
meaning to be. ‘Sooth’ thus= 
ro 6v, fact or truth. See the inter- 
esting article in Skeat. 

squander (i. 3. 18)=to scatter. 
Skeat quotes a good parallel from 
Dryden, Anzus Mirabilis— 


* All alee the sea 
They drive and sguander the huge Belgian 
fleet”. 


The word is connected in ‘deriva- 
tion with ‘squirt’ and ‘squall’. 

stead (i. 3. 6), verb=help, bene- 
fit. Der. from the noun ‘stead’ 
=position or place, and particu- 
larly from its use in the phrase, 
‘‘to stand anyone in good stead”. 

stockish (v. 1. 81), like a stock 
or stump, wooden, hard. 

stomach (iii. v. 62), appetite. 

sufferance (i. 3. 100; iii. 1. 58), 
patience, endurance. 

suit (ii. 2. 160), a petition. The 
word is from Lat. secta, a noun 
formed from seguor. ‘The same 
original sense has developed dif- 
ferently in a ‘suit’ of clothes and 
a ‘suite’ of followers. 

surfeit (i. 2. 5, &c.), verb, to 
suffer from excess. 


thrift (i. 1. 175; i. 3. 80), profit, 
success; from the verb ‘thrive’. 


GLOSSARY, 


traject (iii. 4. 53), ferry. 

troth (i. 2. 1), a variant or 
doublet of ‘truth’. Both are de- 
rived from a ‘Teutonic base, trau 
=I believe. 

tucket (v. 1. 121), from Italian 
toccata, a note or flourish on a 
trumpet. 


unbated (ii. 6.11), undiminished. 
See ‘ Bate’ above. 

unthrift (v. 1. 16), adject., pro- 
digal. 

untread (ii. 6. 10), retrace. 

usance (i. 3. 39), the practice of 
lending money at interest. 


vail (i. 1. 28), verb, ‘a headless 
form of avale’; from Fr. avaler, 
meaning ‘to let drop’ (the verb 
from which ‘avalanche’ is derived). 

varnish’d (ii. 5. 32; ii. 9. 49), 
used in a metaphorical sense, in 
the first passage=masked, in the 
second=decked out, adorned. 

vasty (ii. 7. 41), adj., conveying 
the two ideas of ‘immense’ and 
‘desolate’. 


very (ili. 2. 221), adject. =true. 
via (ii. 2. 9), interject. =away ! 


137 
whiles (i. 2. 116), conjunc.= 
during the time that. ‘Whiles’, 


like ‘needs’, ‘twice’, &c., is an 
adv. formed by adding the posses- 
sive suffix. In ‘whilst’, the -z is 
an excrescence of later addition. 

wis. ‘‘I wis”, in ii. 9. 68, should 
be written ‘ywis’, an adverb mean- 
ing ‘certainly’, corresponding to 
the German gewzss. The spelling 
‘I wis’ is due to false derivation. 
See ‘ pent-house’ above. 

withal (iii. 4. 72), adverb; (iv. 
1. 406), preposition. Derived from 
the A.S. phrase mzd ealle, or mid 
eallum, which is used to emphasize 
a preceding noun governed by mid. 
‘Withal’ is thus adverbial bynature. 
When used as a preposition it 
always follows its noun, and has 
the meaning of ‘with’. (See 
Messrs. Clark and Wright’s note, 
in the Clarendon Press edition of 
the play, on iv. 1. 408). 


younker (ii. 6. 14), a young 
gentleman. The word is derived 
from the Low German jonkheer, or 
jungheer, which is the same as 
High German. junger Herr, a 
young master, a gentleman. 


INDEX OF WORDS. 


N.B.— Other words will be found in the Glossary. 


D lslee S2z 

abridged, i. I. 126. 

advice, iv. 2. 6. 

advisedly, v. I. 239. 
affections, i. I. 16; iv. I. 49. 
a many, ili. 5. 43. 

an, lv. I. 439. 

Andrew, i. 1. 28. 

angel, ii. 7. 57. 

attribute, iv. I. 185. 


bankrupt, iii. 1. 36. 
bargain, iii. 2. 195. 
beets; 1.37156. 


between you and I, iii, 2. 315. 


bound, i. 3. 15. 
ut; d. j130 32: 


can, ili. 2. 163. 

chapel, 1.2. \11. 

civil, v. I. 206. 

clear, ii. 9. 42. 

close, ii. 6. 47. 
commends, ii. 9. 89. 
conceit, i. I. 92; iii. 4. 2. 
confound, iii. 2. 273. 
contain, v. I. 199. 
continent, ill. 2, 131. 
conveniency, iv. I. 79. 
convenient, iii. 4. 56. 
conveniently, ii. 8. 45. 
county, i. 2. 38. 

cover, ii. 9. 44; iii. 5. 29. 
cross my prayer, ili. I. 17. 


danger, iv. I. 174. 
degrees, ii. 9. 4I. 
do withal, iii. 4. 72. 


eke, iii. 2. 22. 
empty from, iv. I. 5. 
enforced, v. I. 212. 


entertain, i. I. 90. 
envious, iii. 2. 279. 
equal, i. 3. 138. 
estate, ili. 2. 233. 
estimation, iv. I. 325, 
excess, 1. 3. 56. 


fancy, iii. 2. 63. 

fearful, i. 3. 164. 

fife, it, Roeeg. 

flight, i. I. 141. 

fond, ii. 9. 27; iii. 3. 9. 
forth, i. I. 15. 


golden, ii. 7. 20, 
good, i. 3. II. 
gratify, iv. I. 400. 
grossly, v. I. 65. 
grow to, ii. 2. 14, 
guarded, ii. 2. 140. 
gudgeon, i. I. 102. 


high-day wit, ii. 9. 97. 
his=its, iii, 2, $2; v. 1. 82. 
humour, iv. I. 43. 
husbandry, iii. 4. 25. 


impeach, iii. 2. 275. 
impenetrable, iii. 3. 18. 
impositions, i. I. 91; ili. 4. 33 
in= into, li, 6) 42; vena 
incarnal, ii. 2. 22. 

inexorable, iv. I. 125. 
insculp’d, ii. 7. 57. 
interrogatories, v. I. 271. 

I were best, v. I. 175. 


Jacks, ail. arg. 
jump with, ii. 9. 32. 


kept, iii. 3. 19. 
knapped, iii. 1. 8. 


INDEX OF WORDS. 


liberal, ii. 2. 168. 
lightest, iii. 2. 91. 
living, iii. 2. 158; v. I. 259. 


manage, ili. 4. 25. 

manners, ii. 3. 17. 

me=for me,, ii. 2. 97. 

me, idiomatic use of, i. 3. 175. 
mere, Mi.’ 2,°259. 

methinks, iv. I. 426. 


mind of love=loving mind, ii. 


o., 42: 
modest, v. 1. 78. 
moe, i. I. 108. 
much, v. I. 199. 
muttons, i. 3. 156. 
mutual, v. I. 77. 


naughty, iii. 3. 9. 
obliged, ii. 6. 7. 


Oil.14s.5, 243 3i. 5. 23: iii. 1.63 


iv. I. 396. 
old, iv. 2. 16. 
on=of, il. 6. 67. 
opinion, i. I. QI. 
ostent, ii. 2. 182. 
out upon, iii. I. 102. 
overtook, iii. 2. 15. 
overweather’d, ii. 6, 18. 


Palatine, i. 2. 38. 

parted, li. 2. 135. 

parts, ii. 2. 165; iv 1. 80. 
patines, v. I. 59. 

prize, Til. 2. 22. 

post, v. I. 46. 

presently, ii. 6. 65; ii. 9. 3. 
prevented, i. I. 61. 

proper, 1.,2.) 62. 

pursue, iv. I. 292. 


quaint, iii. 4. 69. 
qualify, iv. I. 7. 


reason’d, ii. 8. 27. 
regreets, ii. 9. 88. 
respect, v. I. 99. 
respective, v. I. 154. 
rest, ii, 2. 93. 


rhenish, iii. I. 34. 


Petts 3:5 $7. 
roads, i. I. 19, 


royal, iii, 2. 236; iv. I. 29. 


sand-blind, ii. 2. 30. 
savage, v. I. 78. 


school-days, i. I. 140. 


scrubbed, v. I. 160. 
Belize, 1¥, 0.44 7 


sensible, ii, 8. 48; ii. 9. 88. 
set up my rest, li. 2. 93. 


shrewd, ili. 2, 240. 
sits, i. I. 18. 
SO, ill. 2, 197. 


something, i. I. 124. 
speak = bespeak, ii. 4. 5. 


sped,°ii..,0. 71, 


stairs of sand, iii. 2. 84. 


stay, iv. I. 340. 
Stephano, v. 1. 28. 
stomach, iii. 5. 62. 
strained, iv. 1. 178. 
sufferance, iii. 1. 58. 


table, ii. 2. 143. 


thee (reflexive), ii. 2. 155. 
thee=thou, ii. 2. 163. 


thoughts, iii. 2. 109. 
times, iii. 2. 100. 
to-night, ii. 5. 36. 
touches, v. I. 57. 
traject, ili. 4. 53. 
tucket, v. I. 121. 


uncapable, iv. I. 5. 
us (dative), il. 4. 5. 


varnish’d, ii. 5. 32. 
vile, ii. 4. 6. 


waste, ili. 4. 12. 


well to live, ii. 2. 46. 


what, ii. 5. 3 


which=who, AVE ce yy: 
who (uninflected), ii. 


why, ii. 5. 6 


you=for you, iii. 5. 
you were best, ii. 8. 


2 
33> 


6. 30. 


139 


GENERAL INDEX. 


Abbott, Shakespearian Gram- 
mar, i. 3. 95, 109, 126; ii. I. 
40504 25875 GkOO tb ae Gs 
iis) On, OFS AL 7essviien sac 
Tig (2120, oes li Ss eis Neen 
49, 74, 125, 249, 425, 439, 


445; v. I. 175. ‘ 
adjective, extended meaning of, 


iro. 42> We OS. 
adverb, use of, i. 1. 15, 124, 150. 
Alcides, li. 1. 323 lil. 2. 55. 
Algiers, bombardment of, i. 3. 21. 
animals brought totrial, iv. 1.131. 
Antonio’s disposition of Shylock’s 
property, iv. I. 374. 


Baring Gould’s Book of the Were- 
wolf, iv. I. 132. 

Barnabe Rich’s Aphorismes, ii. 5. 
29. 

Beeching, Rev. H. C., ii. 9. 84; 
ili, 2. 216. 

Belgrade, ii. I. 26. 

Biblical references, i. 1. 99; i. 3. 
35, 885 ii. 5. 35, 435 lil. 1. 72; 
iit, 5s £3 1V;, Tadd, 00; 217) 
Veils) 00,2075 

Black Monday, ii. 5. 24. 

blood, colour of, as a sign, li. I. 7. 

Booth, Edwin, i. 3. zzz¢.; iv. 1. 
163. 

Boswell, ii. 5. 29. 


Cambridge editors, the, iii. 2. 216. 

Campbell, Lord, v. 1. 271. 

Capell, ii. 2. 20. 

Chambers’ Book of Days, iv. 1. 
131. 

characteristics of Portia’s suitors 
compared, ii. 9. z7z¢., 53. 

‘character’ notes, ii. 8. 52; ii. 9. 


84; lil, 1.°20,/37,°62, 75; 775 


103, 1105) 1, seme roe 
159, 311; iil. 4° 3, 27, 33, 305 
iv. 1. 43, 86, 88, 163, 164, 200, 
217, 219, 280, 329, 390; v. I. 
88, 130, 160, 251. 

Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women, 
v. 1. 1; Zroilus and Cressida, 
V.i Teas 

Chus, iii. 2. 282. 

Colchos, i. I. 171. 

comic ‘irony’, iv. I. 280; v. I. 
160. 

Coryat’s Crudities, ili. 4. 53. 

curse, the, on Israel, iii. I. 72. 

cutler’s poetry, v. I. 147. 


Daniel, iv. I. 217. 

Dante, Divina Commedia, \. 2.97. 

Democritus, i. 2. 42. 

Diana, v. I. 66. 

Dido, v. I. 10. 

dinner-time, i. I. 70. 

Don Quixote, ii. I. zt, 

double comparative, iv. I. 245. 

double negative, ii. I. 43; iii. 4. 
11; lv. /eyaseeene 

Doyle, J. T., iv. 1. 163, 405. 

dramatic irony, li. 5. 15, 54. 

dress as Shylock, Booth’s, i. 3. 
init. 

dumb-show scene introduced by 
Irving, ii. 5. 54. 

Dyce, iii. 2. 2163° iin pee 


Elizabethan meals, ii. 2. 103; 
over-elaboration, ii. 7. 44. 

ellipsis, il. 9. 34. 

Endymion, v. I. 109. 

Erebus, v. 1. 87. 


fees to judges, iv. I. 405. 
Furness, Varzorum Edition, i. 2. 


GENERAL INDEX. rar 


RMT au eas ti. 2. 403 1:5. 
29; iii. I. 8, 110; iii. 2. 216; 
iv. I. 163, 300, 405; v. I. 85. 


**God’s grace is gear enough”, 
Lin 2+. 235. 


Hagar, ii. 5. 43. 
Halliwell, ii. 7. 75. 
‘*harmless necessary cat”, iv. I. 


4. 

He rrison’s Description of Eng- 
land, i. 1. 70. 

Heraclitus, i. 2. 42. 

Howell’s /zstructions for Foreign 
eaves i, 1.101. 

Hugo, Fran¢ois Victor, iii. 1.110; 
lil. 4. 67. 

Hunter, iii. 4. 53; v. I. I. 

Hyrcanian deserts, ii. 7. 41. 


Indies, i. 3. 16. 

interest, prejudice against, i. 3. 
124. 

Irving, Henry, ii. 5. 54; iv. I. 
298, 390. 


Jacob’s staff, ii. 5. 35. 

Janus, i. I. 50. 

Teen le 071; ii, 2. 239. 

Jason, W. Morris’s, iii. 2. 239. 

Jespersen’s Progress in Language, 
Mu aetO33)ii. 2. 275,' 3155 v. 
I. 175. 

Jessica’s desertion of Shylock, 
ii. 3. 17. 

Jewess’ eye, worth a, ii. 5. 42. 

Jewish prejudice, ii. 8. 16. 

Johnson, ii. 7. 69; iii. 2. 193. 


Kean, iv. I. 390. 
Knight, iii. 2: 84. 


Launcelot’s ‘malapropisms’, ii. 
oes 144. 10; i. 5. 203 iil. 


Sea 
Lichas, ii. 1. 32. 


Malone, iv. 1. 47; v. I. I4I. 
(330) 


Marlowe, reminiscence of, iii. 2. 
230. 

masques, ll. 5. 27. 

Medea, v. I. 12. 

métaphors, i: 10/137 3.1.2. 37-3 
i, 3. 40; Ul. 2. 935 il, 7. 443 
in. 2. 159. 

metrical points, i. 1. 8, 178; ii. 
On 2A Fe OF eli 2y Osa iy 
3. 20; iv. I. 269, 336, 445; v. 
she ° 

Midas, iii. 2. 102. 

modifications in meaning of 
words, iil. 2. 195. 

Morris, W., iii. 2. 239. 

music of the spheres, v. I. 60. 

Mytton Church, i. 1. 84. 


Nashe’s Peerce Penilesse, iv. 1.47. 
Nazarite, i. 3. 29. 

negative, double, ii. I. 43. 
Nestor, i. I. 56. 


objective use of of ii. 5. 2, 36. 

omission of relative, i. I. 1753 
i. 3. 325 ili. I. 71. 

omission of verb of motion, ii. 
Peas, UL 2. 395. 305%, lV. 1, 
395: 

Orpheus, v. I. 79. 


personification, ii. 4. 36; iii. 1. 6. 

physiological theories of Middle 
Aces, iv. 1.'43, 

‘picture-phrases’, i, 2. 173 iii. 
TG 

pirates, 1. 3. 21. 

places of worship as business 
resorts, iii, I. 110, 

plays on words, i. 2. 7; ii. 6. 42; 
Hi. 2.1939) tks 20,445, 1Vit- 
1205. Vio8, 10750130, 

plural without s, iv. 1. 249. 

Pope, iii. 5. 52. 

Portia’s judgment, iv. I. 300. 

Portia’s treatment of her suitors, 
li. 9. z7zt. 

prepositions, use of, by Shake- 
speare, ii, 2, 87. 

M 


142 THE ,MERCHANT OF VENICE. 


Pythagorean doctrine of trans- 
migration of souls, iv. I. 128. 


references to Scripture, i. I. 99; 
L$: 36. Os Lie Shs STL. 
I. 72; iil. 5. 1; iv. I. 194, 200, 
217; v. I. 60, 267. 

relative, omission of, i. I. 175; 
63 325) ee 7 it 

Rhodes, ii. 1. 26. 

rhyme, ili. 2. 140. 

rhyming close, ii. 5. 54. 

rhythm as expressing feeling, ii. 


38. 
Rialto, L'3. 17. 
Rolfe, iii. 4. 12. 
Rowe, iii. 4. 533 v. I. 49, 65. 
Ruskin defends Shakespeare’s 
want of ‘ realism’, ill. 2. 275. 


Salanio, iii. 2. 216. 

Sanders, Thomas, i. 3. I5. 

Schlegel, iii. 2. 183, 193; v. I. 
160. 

Shakespeare’s early scenes, i. I. 
intt.; his prose, iii. 1. 43; his 
use of classical stories, ili. 2. 
102; his use of Latin deriva- 
tives, ili. 2. 131; his English 
colouring, iii. 2. 175; his way 
of ending a play, v. I. zv7z.; 
his debt to Ovid, v. I. 12. 

Shylock’s treatment of Jessica, 
i Waa’ Fahl be 

Sibylla, i. 2. 92. 

Silvayn’s Orator, iv. 1. 88. 

simile, ii. 6. 14. 

Solyman, Sultan, ii. 1. 26. 


Sophy, ii. I. 25. 

stage business, ii. 2. $3. 
Staunton, ii, 2. 135. 

Steevens, v. I. 85. 

Strachan Davidson, J., ii. 9. z77¢. 
superlative implied, iii. 2. 290. 
superlatives, il. I. 46. 
swan-song, ili. 2. 44. 


Tennyson, ili. 2. 44. 

textual points, ii. 1. 35; ii. 7. 69; 
iii. 2, 99, 103, 216; ili. 3. 27; 
lil. 4. 53; ill. 5. 523; lv. I. 49, 
125; v. I. 49, 65. 

Theobald, iii. 3. 27. 

Thirlby, iv. 1. 49. 

‘time’ notes, iii, I. 2; iii. 2.. 
intt., 282; iii. 3. zvet.; iil. 4. 
imit.; lil. 5. ent. ' 

tombs, Elizabethan, i. 1. 84. 

torture, lil. 2. 33. 

trade between Venice and Eng- 
land, i. 3. 18. 

tragic ‘irony’, il. 5. 15. 

Tripolis, i. 3. 15. 

Troy, iii. 2. 56. 

Tylor’s Anthropology, iv. 1. 132. 


Venus’ pigeons, ii. 6. 5. 

verb of motion omitted or im- 
plied, ii. 2. 100; iii. 2. 39, 308; 
lv. I. 395. 

Vienna, ii. I. 26. 


Warburton, iii. 2. 103. 
‘woollen bagpipe”, iv. I. 55. 
worth a Jewess’ eye, ii. 5. 42. 
wrestling, I. 3. 40. 

‘‘ wryneck’d fife”, ii. 5. 29. 







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